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Cyprian: The Churchman 



By 

John Alfred Faulkner 

Professor of Historical Theology in Drew 
Theological Seminary 




CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
TM G«»iM IUC«|VM 

SEf 26 1906 

v-. e«»y"f "t Entry . 
CLASS J>/ KM., No. 



/ 



..*• J 



Copyright, 1906, by 
Jennings & Graham 



CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I. Carthage and the Church, - - 5 

II. Conversion, - 18 

III. Cyprian's Judgment of Heathenism, 26 

IV. A Pope, 36 

V. Before the Storm, - - - - 47 

VI. The Decian Persecution, - - 58 

VII. A New Question in Discipline, 74 
VIII. Cyprian, the Lapsed, and the Church 

in Carthage, - 84 

IX. The Novatian Church, - - -102 

X. Mercy and Help, - - 122 

XI. The Lord's Prayer, - - - - 140 

XII. Cyprian, the Catholic, - - 147 

XIII. Was Cyprian a Roman Catholic? - 163 

XIV. The Great Controversy with Rome, 176 
XV. The Crowning, 18c 

3 



APPENDICES 



Page 

I. The Interpolations in the De Unitate 

Ecclesle, - - - - - 208 

II. Chronological Order of the Epistles, 216 

III. Select Literature, - - - - 219 



Index, 225 



NOTE 

Readers who wish to verify statements in this book, or to 
study further Cyprian's life and testimony, will please remember 
that in the references to his Epistles the numbering of the Oxford 
edition (followed by Hartel) is first given, and then in parentheses 
that of Migne (followed by the Ante-Nicene Library). In the 
case of a few of the Epistles the numbering is the same in both 
editions. 

4 



Cyprian: The Churchman. 

CHAPTER I. 

CARTHAGE AND THE CHURCH. 

Sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar from 
the west, one passes Morocco on the south for about 
200 miles, and then Algeria for 600, — both the an- 
cient Mauretania, only the northern edge of which 
was taken possession of by the Roman Empire. A 
small Eastern section of Algiers was the province 
of Numidia, conquered by Rome B. C. 46 and en- 
tirely incorporated into the empire, in which was 
the town of Hippo Regius on the coast, about 120 
miles directly west of Carthage, the seat of the 
bishopric of the greatest man God ever gave to the 
Ancient Church — Augustine. The eastern section 
of that high Algerian coastline until it turns directly 
south and runs south for 300 miles, is Tunis, ancient 

5 



6 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

Carthage, which, with part of Numidia and the 
coast of Tripoli, formed the province of Africa Pro- 
consularis. Then the mariner sails on east a thou- 
sand miles till he comes to the famous city of Alex- 
andria, 500 miles south from Carthage, separated 
on land by vast wastes. The reader will thus see 
how misleading our rough and ready designation of 
North Africa is in giving us a glimpse of ancient 
relations. The provinces of Egypt and Africa had 
no more to do with each other than India and 
Canada to-day. Egypt was imperial province, oc- 
cupied by an army, and under the emperor's imme- 
diate control; Africa was a senatorial province, 
governed by one of the consuls chosen by lot. 

Carthage was only one hundred miles from 
Sicily, which was the connecting link between Italy 
and the South. Its position made it of great im- 
portance to Rome. Who controls Carthage con- 
trols the Mediterranean, or at least goes a good 
way toward controlling it. So thought France, 
w r hich in 1881 brought Tunis under her wing, and 
thus offset the possession of Gibraltar by England. 
No doubt war between Rome and Carthage was in- 
evitable. There could not be two masters of the 
western Mediterranean. It is not necessary to give 
here the history of those fearful Punic wars, in one 



Carthage and the Church. 7 

of which the greatest general in all history — a man 
against a nation — performed prodigious, apparently 
impossible, feats, and brought Rome to the verge 
of ruin. Suffice it to say that finally, B. C. 146, 
Carthage fell into Roman hands and like Jerusalem 
later, was razed to the ground. Twenty years after, 
Caius Gracchus tried to found a colony there but 
failed. Julius Caesar saw the importance of this, 
but fell under Brutus's dagger before he could carry 
out his intentions. The first emperor, Augustus, 
however, succeeded in establishing a Roman colony 
on the site of Carthage, which in the third century 
when our hero came on the stage, was one of the 
chief cities of the empire. 

The Carthaginians were Phoenicians or Canaan- 
ites. They were a Semitic race, but had none of 
the ennobling religious conceptions of their kindred, 
the Jews. They are an everlasting object lesson by 
contrast of what Divine revelation can do for a 
people. "Who made thee to differ ?" They were one 
of the bloodiest and crudest races of antiquity, and 
"their religion the most hideous ever practiced by 
a people emerged from barbarism." If there had to 
be a war between Carthage and Rome, it was for 
the infinite gain of the world that Rome was con- 
queror. But they were not exterminated; in the 



8 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

new Carthage they lived on with the Romans. But 
the city became Roman through and through: its 
baths, its games, its monuments, its pursuits. The 
Third Legion was quartered there, and great and 
useful works were executed under their supervision. 
That there was intermingling of blood there can be 
no doubt. But in any given case we can not tell 
exactly how the matter stood. Did Cyprian have 
Carthaginian blood? 

It is not necessary to say that the Roman civili- 
zation which took the place of the Punic had its de- 
fects, yes, its fearful faults. It was also coarse, 
cruel, and licentious, though not in the same de- 
gree, and idolatrous, though without human sacri- 
fices. What old Carthage was we can read in the tre- 
mendous novel "Salammbo" by Flaubert, who has 
gone into the conditions with minute and exhaustive 
learning. In the papers of the restive and tumultu- 
ous Carthaginian, Tertullian, a greater man than 
Cyprian, thought not historically so significant, we 
have a picture drawn from life of that civilization 
which came after. It is sufficient to read only one 
book — that "On the Shows." Pompey consecrated 
the theaters to Venus, and made them in a sense a 
temple. Other shows had been devoted to Bacchus. 
So, says Tertullian, we have these two evil spirits 



Carthage: and ths Church. 9 

in sworn confederacy with each other, as the patrons 
of drunkenness and lust. The theater is im- 
modesty's peculiar abode, where nothing is in repute 
but what elsewhere is disreputable. So the best 
path to the highest favor of its god is the vileness 
with which the Atellan gesticulates. The very har- 
lots are brought upon the stage. Let the senate, let 
all ranks blush for very shame. The tragedies and 
the comedies are the bloody and wanton, the im- 
pious and licentious inventors of crimes and lusts. 
If it is right to indulge in the cruel, the impious, 
and the fierce, let us go to the theater and games. 
Let us regale ourselves there with human blood. 1 

In a students' club of a German university I 
once heard one of the members highly laud old 
Rome, and say that a minister could not do better 
than to study the Greek and Latin classics, and take 
from them his models. How far the speaker was 
in solemn earnest, or how far he spoke in banter 
or bravado, I do not know. But for such a one a 
course in Tertullian would be an excellent disci- 
pline. There were redeeming features of course in 
the Roman. The Roman farmer worked and made 
every one who belonged to him work. But even 
here pagan hardness appeared, which left its im- 



1 De Spectaculis, chs. 10, 17, 19. 



xo Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

press on European civilization from that day to this. 
"Pliny saw him or his native tenent in Byzacium 
yoking an old woman with an ass, a practice not 
dropped till late/' Is it dropped? I have often 
seen women harnessed to milk wagons, and sturdy 
girls helping the dogs pull home loads of clothes for 
Monday's wash. The Roman knew how to civilize 
in his way; he had a fine military and civil or- 
ganization. He represented the majesty of law, 
to which Paul appealed, and under which the new 
faith made its way. But, as Archbishop Benson 
finely says, a "fearful shadow dogged all this na- 
tional and individual vigor, the inherent vice of 
the Roman spirit, the scornful inhumanity with 
which uncivilized populations were unhelped and 
repelled. It was this, with its ever pursuing train 
of consequences, this and not the Vandals, which 
brought the last wreck." 2 

Who introduced Christianity into Carthage or 
when, we shall never know. When Cyprian meets 
us it was already widely established over Numidia 
and proconsular Africa. It was nothing to him to 
bring together fifty or eighty bishops. Doubtless 
numerous Christians came with the early colonists, 
and with the constant intercourse between Carthage 

2 Cyprian: His Life, His Times, His Work, XXVII, XXVIII. 



Carthage and ths Church. ii 

and Rome, like that between Boston and Halifax, 
it was inevitable that an aggressive and attractive 
faith like Christianity would be widely represented. 
Africa was a second Italy — it belonged rather to 
Europe than to our Africa. Its literature was 
Latin. When the Church at Rome was a Greek 
exotic, its clergy, its literature, its language all 
Greek, the Church in Africa was Latin. The great 
African Tertullian opened Latin literature in the 
closing years of the second century before what 
we know as the Latin Church was born. 3 Africa 
had a Latin Bible before Rome — she was the mother 
land of Christian Latin literature, and in this, as 
Harnack says, she had a world-historical signifi- 
cance. 4 Far from being the teaching Church of 
the west, Rome for two centuries had not a writer 
of note, while in Tertullian Africa produced a 
writer of range, power, and fertility. 

But Carthage, like Rome, had its Greek element. 
For the play lovers of his city Tertullian wrote his 
books on plays in Greek. 5 Her lovely and noble 
martyr, Perpetua, spoke Greek with Bishop Opta- 



3 It is not meant to deny the priority of Minucius Felix, which, in the 
opinion of many, Ebert has set beyond question ; but, as a fact of large 
historical significance, the above statement stands. Harnack still holds 
that Tertullian was first. 

4 Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums, Leipz. 1902, S. 515. 
De Corona, 6. 



12 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

tus and Presbyter Aspasius. The Greek transla- 
tions of the oldest African Martyr Acts may be as 
old as the Acts themselves. 6 This Greek element, 
however, Was not a preponderating one, as it was 
in Rome. Africa was the first Xatin Church. 

At any rate when the first historical notice of 
the African Church meets us in Tertullian we have 
a strong and wide-spread society. "Our numbers 
are so great/' he says, "constituting all but the ma- 
jority in every city. What will you make of so 
many thousands, of such a multitude of men and 
women, of every age and every dignity? What 
will be the anguish of Carthage herself, which you 
will have to decimate, etc.? Spare Carthage if not 
thyself." 7 As to the extent and influence of Chris- 
tianity, Asia Minor was the only parallel. It had 
even gone among the original Carthaginians, though 
to what extent at the time of Tertullian and Cyprian 
we do not know. Probably not largely, as the names 
of the third century are almost altogether Latin. 
But among the martyrs there were Punic names — 
in fact, the first African martyr, A. D. 180, was a 
Pune. In the fourth century it was necessary, or 
at least very desirable, for the bishops and priests 



6 Harnack, Ibid. 514. 

7 Ad Scap., 2 and 5. Cf Apol., A. D. 197, chs. 2 and 37. 



Carthage: and the: Church. 13 

to know Punic, though there never was any Punic 
translation of the Bible. To the Punes the Bible 
was read through an interpreter, or they had their 
sermons in Punic. 8 But there was no Punic Chris- 
tianity as there was a Celtic. 

A most interesting fact is noted by Harnack, 
which may help us in our search for the origin of 
Christianity in Carthage. And that is the strong 
military element in the speech of the Church writers 
there. Not only in Tertullian, a son of a soldier, 
but more strikingly in Cyprian, where military lan- 
guage is almost standard and prescriptive. So also 
the large use of legal language, which can not be 
referred entirely to the converted lawyers, Tertul- 
lian and Cyprian. The Church speech, says Har- 
nack, which was created in Africa, shows that, so 
far as it was not the common speech, it was the 
product of immigrant officials and military men. 9 
Does not that mean that Christianity owed its origin 
and support in Africa, as elsewhere, in part to con- 
verted soldiers? 

The greatest man in the African Church was 
Tertullian, and the greatest man in the Christian 
world of his age (say 155-230). He is well worthy 



8 See Zahn, Geschichte des Neutestamentlichen Kanons, I, 40-44. 
Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung, 515. 9 Ibid. 516. 



14 Cyprian: Thd Churchman. 

of treatment in this series. Not a single life of him 
exists in English, except the old study by the 
learned Bishop Kaye (1826, 3d ed. 1845), an d 
hardly an essay in the Theological Reviews, 10 
though the Germans have a whole shelf of books on 
him. The greatest literary master of Church his- 
tory in Germany, Professor Albert Hauck, of Leip- 
zig, sprang into fame by his fine life of Tertullian 
in 1877. Tertullian was the watershed of ancient 
Church history, the turning point of primitive and 
Catholic Christianity. The Church owes a vast 
debt to him, because for her he wrote the strongest 
defense she had received up to that time — an 
apology of tremendous power and effectiveness. 
Then his little book "To Scapula," proconsul of 
Africa, is one of the noblest pleas for toleration ever 
made. In variety, strength, and volume of literary 
output he far exceeds Cyprian, and he always main- 
tained a more genuinely Christian attitude. It is 
true that, disgusted with the worldliness of the 
Church, he later became a Montanist, and on ac- 
count of this divergence from the so-called Catholic 
Church, which he criticised with relentless severity, 
the later Church omitted him from her roll of saints. 
Cyprian fed his soul on him. Some of his books 



10 But see J. B. Mayor in The Expositor, July, 1902. 



Carthags and the Church. 15 

are but the echoes of Tertullian. "Hand me the 
Master" (Da Magistrum), he would say to his sec- 
retary when asking for the rolls of Tertullian. 11 
He said truly. Of all the Christian men who lived 
in the dying years of that fateful second century, 
Tertullian was the master. 

I have already mentioned the large number of 
bishops in the African provinces. At a council, 
A. D. 240, ninety were present. That means a 
widely diffused episcopal organization, but no dioc- 
esan organization. In other words, every little 
town had its bishop, — and entirely distinct from 
presbyter, be it remembered. Of detached presby- 
ters and deacons we hear nothing. Harnack says 
that the episcopal organization in Africa was formed 
on the model of the municipal organization there, 
which itself was derived from the Phoenicians. He 
quotes Mommsen to the effect that when Roman 
rule began in Africa, the Carthaginian country at 
that time consisted essentially of small city societies, 
administered by their suffetes, of which small city 
organizations there were about 300, and that Rome 
allowed that arrangement to stand. 12 And on that 
old Punic civic platform the Church imposed her 
already developed episcopate. 

II Jerome, De Vir. 111., 53. 

12 Harnack, Ibid. 516, note 5. Mommsen, Rom. Gesch. V, 644. 



16 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

What circumstances contributed to make Chris- 
tianity so strong in Africa we do not know. It may 
be because such powerful personalities as Tertul- 
lian and Cyprian were given to the Church. For a 
hundred years Carthage was the cynosure of all 
eyes. Cyprian stood forth like the governor of a 
province. In the middle years of the third cen- 
tury he and not the Roman bishop was pre-emi- 
nently the pope. Under him the number of con- 
verts among the heathen were greatly increased. 
"The new crowd of believers," he calls them. 13 
Strong men are as necessary to impress heathens 
to-day as then. Piety is indispensable to a mission- 
ary, but it will not make up for brain power and 
learning. So Carthage was the central city of 
Christianity in the middle of the third century, and 
this was largely due to Cyprian. He corresponded 
with bishops in Rome, Spain, Gaul, Cappadocia; 
he looked to it that his letters on the lapsed should 
come to the notice of all the Church, 14 and he ruled 
the Church of North Africa from Syrtis to Maure- 
tania. 15 And what that Church was is brought home 
to us by the estimate of Harnack that in procon- 
sular Africa and near-by provinces there were about 
150 bishops. 16 What if as strong men as Cyprian 

13 Ep. 66 (68), 5. 14 Ibid. 55 (51), 5. 16 Harnack, 517, note 2. 16 Ibid. 519. 



Carthage and the: Church. 17 

had succeeded to the Carthaginian bishopric! 
Would Rome have won her supremacy so easily? 
And what if Vandal and Mohammed had not 
decimated the African Church! Might there not 
have been one large section of Christendom outside 
of the Roman "sphere of influence ?" 



CHAPTER II. 

CONVERSION. 

Thascius Cyprian was born we know not when 
nor where, but probably near Carthage in the early 
years of the third century. His parents were rich, 
and for a child of pagan parents only two pro- 
fessions lay open — arms or law, this latter including 
rhetoric. Like Tertullian he chose law, and in 
Carthage attained high standing in it. "He gained 
great glory to himself," says Lactantius, "by the 
profession of the art of oratory." 1 The lawyer and 
rhetorician of ancient times was supposed to be a 
master of all the sciences that then were. He had 
not only to know what to speak, but how to speak 
and to act, to be a master of grace as well as of 
reason. He had not only to be a man of learning, 
but to have his learning and every other accom- 
plishment in readiness for the persuasion and con- 
vincing of men. The average modern lawyer would 
shine poorly by the side of the wide and persevering 
culture of the ancient advocate. At thirty Cicero 



1 Div. Inst. V. x. 

18 



Conversion. 19 

was still under the tuition of Molon. How per- 
sistent they were in technical perfection. 2 A rhetori- 
cian of Cyprian's time was so highly honored that 
his daughter was espoused to the Emperor Gordian. 
Is it any wonder that when such men as Minucius 
Felix and Tertullian and Cyprian were converted, 
they exercised immense influence on the higher 
classes ? 

Africa was the special "nurse of pleaders," re- 
minding Archbishop Benson of the fervor and elo- 
quence with which Ireland has "enriched the Eng- 
lish bar." Not the least of them was Cyprian. He 
had pursued the highest culture of his time. "What 
gold, what silver, what raiment," exclaims Augus- 
tine, "he brought with him out of Egypt!" When 
Jerome wants to illustrate the greatest power of 
Christianity, viz., that of converting men of learn- 
ing and culture, men "who are the last of all to 
learn the word, yet at length, like the Ninevites 
descend from their thrones to plebeian levels, lay 
aside the radiance of their eloquence, put away the 
intoxicating draught of words, and thenceforth con- 
tent themselves with the majesty of Christian 
thoughts," he selects Cyprian as an example. 3 It 
was indeed a trophy for Christianity. 



2 Aug. Chr. Doc. bk. 4. 3 Comm. in Jon. c. 3. 



20 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

What about the circumstances of Cyprian's con- 
version ? Alas ! here we know almost next to noth- 
ing. But a careful study of Pontius's "Life of 
Cyprian" (Pontius was his deacon and friend) and 
of Cyprian's own letter to Donatus throws a little 
light. Pontius refers his conversion to the influence 
of Caecilius, a presbyter, whose name he took in 
baptism, as Neander did the names of his friends. 
"He had close association among us with a just 
man of praiseworthy memory, by name Caecilius, 4 
in age as well as in honor a presbyter, who had 
converted him from his worldly errors to the ac- 
knowledgment of the true divinity. This man he 
loved with entire honor and all observance, regard- 
ing him with an obedient veneration, not only the 
friend and comrade of his soul, but as the parent of 
his new life." 5 But of this faithful soul-winner 
we know nothing more. He has vanished from the 
horizon of the Church, just as many another worker 
has done after bringing some one to the Savior who 
has been a burning and shining light. It was per- 
sonal service, personal friendship, the strength and 
beauty of Christian testimony of the unknown 
Caecilius, which gave us Cyprian. 

In the letter to Donatus there is none of the 



4 Hartel's MSS. have Caecilianus, 6 Vita Cyp. 4. 



Conversion. 21 

intimate personal heart history which makes the 
confessions of Augustine so fascinating and so 
famous. There are striking figures but no clear 
soul-history, rhetoric but not much light. "While 
I was still lying in darkness and gloomy night, wav- 
ering hither and thither, tossed about on the foam 
of this boastful age, uncertain of my wandering 
steps, knowing nothing of my real life, and remote 
from truth and light, I used to regard it as a diffi- 
cult matter that a man should be born again, a 
truth which the Divine Mercy had announced for 
my salvation, and that a man quickened to a new 
life in the laver of saving water should be able to 
put off what he had formerly been, and, although 
retaining his bodily stature, should be himself 
changed in heart and soul." 6 This shows that he 
became convicted of sin, so that his old life ap- 
peared in its right colors; and it shows also that 
he had often thought of Christianity and of its doc- 
trine of the new birth. He then goes on to say that 
he came to acquiesce in a sinful life as inevitable, 
indulge his evil habits as "actual parts of me," until 
finally by the "help of the water of the new birth, 
the stain of former sins had been wiped away, and 
the light from above serene and pure had been in- 



CAd. Donat. 3 (Ep. 1). 



22 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

fused into my reconciled heart, after that by the 
agency of the Spirit breathed from heaven a second 
birth had restored me to a new man ; then in a won- 
drous manner doubtful things at once began to as- 
sure themselves to me, hidden things to be re- 
vealed, dark things to be enlightened, so that I was 
able to acknowledge that what previously being 
born of the flesh had been living in the practice 
of sins, was of the earth earthy, but had now be- 
gun to be glad, and was anointed by the spirit of 
holiness." 7 

By the instructions and example of Caecilius he 
had gradually come to a knowledge of himself, and 
to a desire to become a Christian, and apparently at 
or after baptism his faith laid hold on Christ, and 
he was transformed into a new creature in Him. 

It is evident also by the epistle of Donatus that 
another element contributed to his conversion, viz., 
the comparative purity of the morals of Christians. 
His association with Caecilius and his observation 
of other Christians, was making hideous to 
him by contrast the pagan civilization in which 
he had been brought up, revealing it in 
all its cruelty, rottenness, and shame. For 
in this letter, a kind of confession, a kind of 



7 Ad. Donat. 4 (Ep. 1). 



Conversion. 23 

justification and explanation of his change, he de- 
votes the chief space to a frank description of the 
heathenism he had left. "I will draw away the veil 
from the darkness of this hidden world." And he 
gives a picture of it as he knew it, and he knew it, 
this cultured wealthy lawyer of the great city. It 
is a picture that can well be commended to the ad- 
mirers of pagan ethics and art, who think we could 
well exchange Christianity for Greek philosophy. 
There is no doubt that on the part of many Chris- 
tians there was a sad lack, as we shall see, in show- 
ing forth the moral beauty of their religion, but at 
the worst the latter was so infinitely superior to 
paganism to the keen eyes of this observant and 
practiced lawyer, that he was unconsciously and 
irresistibly drawn towards it. 

After these descriptions he pictures a soul freed 
from this bondage. Withdrawn from the eddies of 
a distracting world, he lifts his eyes to heaven ; and, 
having been admitted to the gift of God, he can 
boast that whatever in human affairs seem lofty 
and proud, lies beneath his care. He who is greater 
than the world can desire nothing from the world. 
There he is free, stable, fitted for the light of im- 
mortality. This new power and dignity is a gift 
from God, and it is accessible to all. "As the sun 



24 Cyprian: Tut Churchman. 

shines spontaneously, as the day gives light, as the 
fountain flows, as the shower yields moisture, so 
does the heavenly spirit infuse itself into us. When 
the soul in its gaze into heaven has recognized its 
author, it rises higher than the sun, and far tran- 
scends all this earthly power, and begins to be what 
it believes itself to be." 8 Gold ceilings and mosaic 
marbles will seem mean to one who knows that it 
is himself who is to be perfected, is to be adorned, 
and that the all-important temple is the temple of 
the soul in which the Holy Spirit has begun to make 
His abode. All other beauty shall perish but this 
remains, "perpetual, vivid, in perfect honor, in per- 
manent splendor." 9 

Cyprian's conversion was radical from the start. 
In this respect it was like that of the early Meth- 
odists. He abode in no half-way house, partly 
Christian, partly pagan. He was now Christ's, and 
he served Him henceforth according to his light 
with undeviating loyalty. The Christianity to which 
he was converted was not entirely that of Paul — 
200 years lay between; it was the semi-Scriptural, 
semi-Catholic Christianity of A. D. 250, various 
traits of which we shall see as we go forward. But 
such as it was, Cyprian accepted it with intelligent 

8 Ad. Donat. 14 (Ep. 1). 9 Ibid. 15. 



Conversion. 25 

and unselfish devotion from which he never swerved 
for a moment. To show and test his genuineness this 
rich rhetorician sold the most of his possessions and 
gave to the Church for distribution to the poor, 
sick, and other stricken classes. His house in 
Carthage, however, was bought back by the Church 
and given to him again. He entered upon a life of 
fasting, prayer, and especially of the diligent study 
of the Holy Scriptures, of which his writings re- 
veal large and exact acquaintance, not neglecting 
the Church teachers before him, and especially his 
beloved Tertullian. 

The year of his baptism we do not Know exactly 
— probably about 245 or 246. But the day on which 
the Carthaginian Roman lawyer, Thascius Cyprian, 
went under what he calls the "birth-giving water" 
— probably on the beach of his own beautiful bay — 
was one of the most important days in the history 
of men. In him the Catholic era became crystal- 
lized in forms one sees in almost every church one 
passes. 



CHAPTER III. 

CYPRIAN'S JUDGMENT OF HEATH- 
ENISM. 

It is hardly conceivable that so thoughtful and 
well-read a man as Cyprian could have had much 
heart in his paganism. He must have been like 
many in that Graeco-Roman world — externally at- 
tached to the faith of the State, but with no love 
for it, no interior drawing. As soon as he is con- 
verted and has to justify his new attitude, he turns 
against the religious life of heathenism with an 
earnestness and intelligence and moral revulsion 
which show that the old religion came to him but 
found nothing in him. 

Like others of the fathers, Cyprian believed the 
gods were demons who had gotten men in their 
possession and persuaded them to worship them in- 
stead of God. These demons were themselves cast 
out by Christians, which is a sure proof to him of 
their frailty and contemptibleness. He challenges 
the heathen : O, would you but see them and hear 

26 



Cyprian's Judgment of Hsath^nism. 27 

them (the demons) when they are adjured by us, 
and tortured with spiritual scourges, and are ejected 
from possessed bodies, when, howling and groaning 
at the voice of man and the power of God, they 
confess the judgment to come. These demons 
(gods) are subject to Christians! And yet you 
worship them. You will see that we are entreated 
by those whom you entreat, that we are feared by 
those whom you fear, whom you adore. You will 
see that under our hands they stand bound and 
tremble as captives, whom you look up to and ven- 
erate as gods. Can you not be convinced as to 
what kind of gods you worship when you see and 
hear them upon our interrogation betraying what 
they are, and even in your presence unable to con- 
ceal those deceits and trickeries of theirs P 1 

The casting out of demons was a large function 
in the early Church. Some have seen in this an evi- 
dence of the credulity and childishness of the times. 
But as to the reality of the phenomena, the reality 
of the cures, there can be no doubt. The question 
is as to their interpretation. The true view is that 
in certain ages of civilization, and in certain stages 
of moral lapse, evil spirit or spirits really take pos- 
session in some sense of the person, and according 



1 Ad Demetrianum, 15. 



28 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

to the laws of the soul work there to his physical, 
mental, and moral ruin. It is not more irrational 
to believe in the existence of evil spirits than in 
that of good spirits, or even that of bad men. And 
if they exist, it is according to the laws of psychol- 
ogy that they may obtain control of human spirits. 
What was seen in the early Church is seen to-day 
in some countries. 2 In this realm of evil possession 
the Church wrought mighty victories for sanity and 
morality. But interpreting the demons as heathen 
gods was another matter. 

The author of "Quod idola dii non sint" (That 
Idols are not Gods), generally attributed to 
Cyprian, has another philosophy of the gods. He 
says that the gods were formerly kings, who as soon 
as they died began to be adored by their people. 
Hence temples were founded to them, images made 
to them, sacrifice paid and festal days appointed. 
So to posterity these rites became sacred which at 
first had been adopted as a consolation. He proves 
this by the stories of the works of these gods on 
earth. Apollo fed the flocks of Admetus, Nep- 
tune founded walls for Laomedon, the cave of Jupi- 
ter is seen in Crete, and his sepulcher is shown, 3 etc. 



2 See the valuable book of Nevius, Demon Possession and Allied 
Themes, New York, 1894. 3 Quod Idola, 1, 2. 



Cyprian's Judgment of Hsath^nism. 29 

When it is said that to these gods Rome owes 
its greatness, the writer replies that that is due sim- 
ply to the vicissitudes and chances of fortune. But 
Rome has no real moral greatness, and never had. 
A lot of criminals and profligates come together, 
found an asylum, by impunity for crimes made 
their number great. Romulus himself was a frat- 
ricide. When they want marriage they begin that 
"affair of concord by discords." They steal, they 
do violence, they deceive, — anything to get people. 
Their marriage consists of broken covenants of 
hospitality and cruel wars with their fathers-in- 
law. Brutus puts his sons to death that the com- 
mendation of his dignity may increase by the ap- 
proval of his wickedness. 4 How did this plain 
speaking strike the haughty Roman ? 

But this author gets round to the demon theory. 
They are impure and wandering spirits, who after 
having been steeped in worldly vices, lost their 
celestial vigor by the contagion of earth, and now, 
ruined themselves, seek to ruin others. Even poets 
acknowledge the existence of demons, and Socrates 
said he was instructed by one. From them magi 
have power for mischief or for mockery, though 
the chief of them, Hostanes, said that the form of 



4 Quod Idola, 5. 



30 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

the true God can not be seen, and that true angels 
stand around His throne. Plato believed this also, 
maintaining one God, the rest angels or demons. 
Hermes Trismegistus believed, too, in one God in- 
comprehensible, beyond our ken. 5 

As to the moral content of paganism Cyprian 
did not mince his words. Nor was he haranguing a 
crowd or advocating a cause before a jury, when 
he might be tempted, like our political orator, to 
exaggerate; but he is giving his sober thoughts to 
a friend who could not be deceived. Both knew 
their world. Cyprian, at least, we may assume, 
knew it thoroughly. And he finds nothing to re- 
gret for having left it: the roads blocked up with 
robbers, seas beset with pirates, wars everywhere. 
The world is wet with mutual blood and murder, 
which for an individual is called a crime, is called 
a virtue when it is committed wholesale. 6 Was there 
ever a finer description of most wars than that? 
The quickened conscience of the early Christians 



5 Quod Idola, 6. Though scholars are now generally agreed that the 
Quod Idola dii non sint is not the work of Cyprian (see Haussleiter, 
Cypr. Studien. Comment. Woefflin, Leipz. 1891, 379 ff, Ehrhard, Die alt- 
christliche Literatur und ihre Erforschung, Freib. i. B, 1900, 462), yet it is 
undeniable that its thought moves in the Cyprianic circle. It is a compila- 
tion from Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Cyprian. As the latter borrowed 
wholesale from the others, one may fairly take the Quod Idola as repre- 
senting Cyprian also. 

6 Ad Donatum, 6. 



Cyprian s Judgment of Heathenism. 31 

detested war, but they did not detest it more than 
it deserved. 

He then turns his attention to that beloved in- 
stitution of paganism — the gladiatorial shows. Men 
w r ho have committed no crime are fattened for this 
slaughter. "Man is slaughtered that man may be 
gratified and the skill that is best able to kill is an 
exercise of an art. Men train to murder. Men of 
ripe age and beautiful person offer themselves for 
this horrible combat. Think of it ! Fathers look 
down on their sons; a brother is in the arena and 
his sister hard by. The increased pomp of the show 
makes the tickets higher, yet even the mother will 
pay the increased price to witness her child's death- 
wound on a gala-day. Yet with all these frightful 
scenes they are not at all conscious that they are 
parricides with their eyes." 7 And it needed the in- 
troduction of Christianity to distinguish between 
murder, torture, a thousand deaths and — sport! 

As to the theater, though it does not take life 
like the gladiatorial shows, it kills virtue — and it 
must be confessed that, though it has changed for 
the better under Christianity, it is still sufficiently 
true to its reputation in Cyprian's time. Parricide 
and incest are unfolded in action, so that as the ages 



7 Ad Donatum, 7. 



32 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

pass, old crimes may not be forgotten. On the 
stage the old wickedness and impiety still live on. 
By the teaching of infamies in the mimes the specta- 
tor is reminded of what he may have done or may 
yet do. Adultery is learnt while it is seen; and 
having public authority this mischief panders to 
vices and works havoc among modest women. Be- 
sides "what a degradation of morals, what a stimu- 
lus to abominable deeds, what a food for vice, to be 
polluted by stage gestures, and against the covenant 
and law of one's birth to gaze in detail upon in- 
cestuous abominations." They show Venus im- 
modest, Mars adulterous, and that Jupiter of theirs 
not more supreme in dominion than in vice, etc. 
And now put the question, says Cyprian: Can he 
who looks upon such things be healthy-minded or 
modest? Men immitate the god they adore, — their 
crimes become their religion. 8 

This Zola-like painter of a world he knew so 
well then refers to that vice 9 which ancient litera- 
ture reveals as frightfully common, — impossible to 
believe as our feelings make it. Is it possible that 
paganism, glorified by our freethinkers, had first to 
hear from the new despised faith protests against 
the unnatural diabolical lusts which its best men 



8 Ad Donatum, 8. 9 Rom. i, 26, 27. 



Cyprian's Judgment of H^athdnism. 33 

looked upon as a matter of course ? But in Cyprian's 
day it would seem that the higher morality of Chris- 
tianity was bringing some of the guilty to conscious- 
ness at least. He speaks of these accusing others 
in order to escape their own condemnation, — ac- 
cusers in public criminals in private; people im- 
bruted with the madness of vice deny what they 
have done, and yet hasten to do. 10 

The sacred seat of law itself is defiled. Wick- 
edness is done in the very face of the statutes, and 
the Forum echoes with the madness of strife. Then 
the punishments — the claw that tears, the rack that 
stretches, the fire that burns — and of these the poor 
Christians had knowledge. Who is to help? The 
patron? He deceives. The Judge? He sells his 
sentence. The very judge becomes the culprit that 
the innocent may perish. Crimes are everywhere. 
One man forges a will, another makes a false oath ; 
children are robbed of their inheritances ; on all 
sides the "venal impudence of hired voices falsifies 
the charges, while the guilty do not even perish 
with the innocent. There is no fear about the laws ; 
no concern for either inquisitor or judge; when the 
sentence can be bought off for money, it is not cared 
for." 11 We often hear about the majesty of Roman 



10 Ad Donatum, 9. 11 Ibid. 10. 

3 



34 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

law, the respect for justice, and all that, and there 
was a time and a season in which these things were 
realities; but the relentless pen of Rome's own 
lawyers uncovered the rottenness of an age and a 
civilization which our easy-going pagan idealists 
hold up for admiration. 

In another place, speaking of plagues, Cyprian 
says that they only give opportunity for avarice and 
rapine. In these times people do not show affection, 
but are rash in quest of impious gains. They shun 
the deaths of the dying, but crave the spoils of the 
dead, so that it looks as if the wretched were for- 
saken in their sickness, lest being cared for they 
might recover. Everywhere there is seizing, every- 
where taking possession — no dissimulation about 
spoiling, no delay. Thieves conceal themselves in 
ravines and rob under cover of darkness. Avarice 
rages openly, exposes its weapons in the market- 
place. "Thence cheats, thence poisoners, thence as- 
sassins in the midst of the city, — these are eager for 
wickedness as they are wicked with impunity.'' 
Judges are for sale. It might appear from such 
books as Steffens's "Shame of the Cities" (New 
York, 1904), that corruption could not well be more 
appalling in the Roman Empire than in some of the 
cities of our Christian America, and especially in 



Cyprian's Judgment o£ Hsath^nism. 35 

Philadelphia, which, under the Quay ring and its 
successor, seems to bear the palm for political and 
financial and other debauchery. But as a matter of 
fact, such towns are as the isles of Araby the Blest 
by the side of conditions revealed to us in both the 
pagan and Christian literature of ancient times. 



CHAPTER IV. 

A POPE. 

On£ of the first books written by Cyprian after 
his conversion was his "Testimonies Against the 
Jews," though it was not written till he had sat- 
urated himself through and through with the Scrip- 
tures. His method is simple. After the manner of 
a lawyer he presents his case in a series of brief 
numbered propositions, and then takes each thesis 
in order and proves it simply by quotations from 
both Old and New Testaments, especially the Old. 
His book is dedicated to a young Christian friend, 
Quirinus, to whom he says that if he wants strength 
and intelligence, he must "examine more fully the 
Scriptures, old and new, and read through the com- 
plete volume of the spiritual books." All patristic 
literature is evidence of the loyal and hearty atti- 
tude of the Christians to the Bible, undeterred by 
the fear least some would read it too much or be 
misled by their own interpretations. Cyprian calls 
the Scriptures the "spring of the divine fullness," 

*6 



A Pops. 37 

and he urges Quirinus "to drink more plentifully 
and be more abundantly satisfied." 1 

The propositions concerning the Jews which 
he seeks to prove are such as these : that they have 
fallen under the wrath of God because they have 
left Him for idols ; because they slew the prophets ; 
that they do not understand their Scriptures and 
never will until they believe on Christ; that it was 
foretold that they would lose their land, that their 
old law would cease, that a new one would come, 
that a new prophet would arise, that Gentiles would 
receive the Christ, that they would take the place 
of the Jews in the Divine favor, but that the Jews 
can still be saved if they with baptism wash away 
the blood of Christ slain, and passing over into the 
Church obey His precepts. These and other proposi- 
tions are thus proved in order simply by quotations 
from the Scriptures. 

The second book is taken up with propositions 
concerning Christ, which show that Cyprian would 
have been a stanch supporter of Athanasius. Christ 
is the First-born, the Wisdom of God, the Word of 
God, is God, was incarnated in our race, born of a 
virgin, Man and God, Son of man and Son of God ; 
that in the passion and sign of the cross is all virtue 

1 Test. adv. Jud., Introd. 



38 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

and power ; that it is impossible to attain to God the 
Father except through Christ the Son, and the latter 
is to come as Judge, and is to reign as King forever. 
The last book is a series of miscellaneous proposi- 
tions in religion and morals proved in the same way. 
The only apocryphal book quoted is Ecclesiasticus. 
His use of Scripture is of course entirely arbitrary ; 
and though he often hits upon apposite and telling 
passages to prove his points, he shows no scientific 
principles of interpretation, and seizes upon Old 
Testament passages helter-skelter as though they 
were all equally literal and equally applicable to the 
Christian religion and to present circumstances. 

A prominent rhetorician, who upon his conver- 
sion sold his estate and devoted himself to sacred 
studies, showed immediately that he was called to 
the ministry. He was therefore made deacon im- 
mediately, in 247 was made presbyter, and in 248 
bishop. He went through the two first years so 
quickly and so soon made a bishop that we have 
hardly any account of his activity in the last sta- 
tions. What was a bishop about 250, and how was 
he elected? 

The laity were the commons or plebs, the clergy, 
the ordo, that is, the senatorial order of the Church. 2 



See Benson, 19, who has correctly represented the facts here. 



A Pope. 39 

Both had distinctive rights, for both belonged to the 
flock of Christ. The laity had privileges of which 
they have long since been robbed by the hierarch- 
ical Church. As the senators in court and in basil- 
ica had the common bench (consessus), so had the 
clergy in the congregation. Did this difference be- 
tween commons (laity) and senators (orders, or 
clergy) rest upon a divine anointing of the latter 
which set them apart as in essence a separate caste 
through whom alone the life of God could come to 
men? Were they the indispensable means of com- 
municating grace on account of a sacred function 
which thvy shared among themselves solitary and 
incommunicable? Or was their place rather that 
of custom and use, for good order and decency of 
administration, by the ordinance of the Church, 
divine (of course) in a sense, but not as excluding 
laymen from the same grace and functions if neces- 
sity should arise? Was the source of their power 
God acting solely through clerical officers, or God 
acting through the whole Church? 

The "Master" Tertullian did not answer these 
questions in the present "Catholic" sense. He re- 
mained true, at least measurably, to the original 
democratic and spiritual conception of the Church. 
"The authority of the Church," he says, "makes the 



40 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

difference between order [ordinem, clergy] and 
people, and honor [or office of the clergy] is con- 
secrated by the common bench of the order. Where 
there is no common bench [of the clergy] you 
[laymen] offer [administer the Lord's Supper], you 
baptize, and you are priest alone for yourself. 
For where three are the Church is, even if 
they are laymen." 3 Tertullian is always true to 
that conception. He does indeed except women 
from any ministerial function, but that is entirely 
on account of their sex. 4 He blames the heretics 
also for inextricably mixing up laity and clergy, 
and observing no decent order, capriciously "en- 
joining sacerdotal offices on laymen/' but he is here 
speaking of an apparently reckless disregard of all 
order. 5 In his work on baptism he also has in mind 
this observance of decent administration. He says 
the chief priest, that is, the bishop, has the right of 
administering baptism if he is present, after him 
the presbyters and deacons, though not without the 
bishop's authority, "on account of the honor of the 
Church, which being preserved peace is preserved. 
Beside these, laymen have the right, for what is 
equally received can be equally given. Unless 



3 De Exhort. Cast. 7. 4 De Veland. Virg. 9. 5 De Praescrip. 

Haeret. 41. 



A Pops. 41 

bishops or priest or deacons be on the spot, other 
disciples are called to the work." Tertullian lays 
down the great principle that ought to be dear to 
every Christian: The Word of the Lord ought not 
to be hidden by any, a principle on which the early 
Methodists went, by which they won their triumphs. 
"In like manner, too, baptism, which is equally God's 
property, may be administered by all." 6 In Tertul- 
lian's mind all Christian men are as really priests 
as the Jewish priests, and so he thought that all 
Christians, like the Jewish priests, were bound to 
single marriages only. 7 The Levitical priesthood 
typified to Tertullian not the sacerdotal ordo 
(clergy), but the universal priesthood of Christians. 
"In his time," says Benson well, "the substant- 
ive priesthood of the laity was an understood 
reality/' 8 He believed of course in the official priest- 
hood of the clergy, and I do not say that he had 
thought through the doctrine of the ministry ac- 
cording to Christianity. But he came much nearer 
to it than Cyprian. 

In the twenty-five years that had elapsed be- 
tween the two great Carthaginians, the Catholic tide 
had not stood still, and Cyprian was farther up the 
shore than Tertullian. With him the bishop was 



6 De Baptismo, 17. 7 De Monog 1 . 7. 8 Cyprian, 21. 



42 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

not simply the representative of the people in their 
priestly capacity, officially taking up in himself their 
priestly character. No, he is much greater. He 
represents not the people but Christ Himself. He 
is the priest, not so much episcopus as sacerdos. 
The Jewish priesthood typifies not the Christian na- 
tion of priests, but the clergy. The rights and privi- 
leges of the old priesthood passed at the crucifixion 
to the Christian bishop; each congregation is the 
"congregation of Israel ;" the election of a bishop is 
made in accordance with the law of Moses ; the 
presbyters are the Levites, and when they approach 
the people are to rise up, as Lev. xix, 32, commands. 
The bishops are also apostles, they succeed in ordi- 
nation from the apostles ; they stand by divine crea- 
tion, not by historic or ecclesiastical right alone; 
the diaconate may be a human institution, but not 
the bishops. These are also judges. They judge 
in Christ's stead. To dispute the bishop's decision 
is to be a heretic. Even to keep the faith and the 
true worship, and yet invade the office of bishop is 
the sin of Korah. The Old Testament laws about 
High Priest apply to bishops alone. 9 "Verily he 
[the bishop] officiates as a priest in the place of 



9 Ep. 8 (2), 1 ; 67, 1, 4, 9 ; 65, 2 ; 3 (64), 3 ; 66 (68), 4 ; 59 (54), 5 ; 66 (68) 
3 ( 6 4); 59 (54); 43 (39)- 



A Pope). 43 

Christ, because he imitates what Christ did, and 
offers the sacrifice true and full [in the Lord's Sup- 
per] in the Church to God the Father." 10 

It will not do to say that all this was an air- 
castle, though it was ; so far as resting on any real 
basis in Scripture or in fact it was as unsubstantial 
as last year's dreams. But to Cyprian it was the 
most real thing in the world. And it was suffi- 
ciently in accord with the Catholic evolution of the 
second and third centuries as — when supported by 
Cyprian's piety, reputation, persistence, and exege- 
sis (arbitrary, fantastic, false though it was) — to 
make a profound impression, set the results of that 
evolution in permanent shape, and make his little 
cycle in that Tunisian city the determining reckon- 
ing for all Christians and for all time. 

When Cyprian came on the scene, the bishop 
was the head officer in the local Church, there being 
a bishop in every town. Against him persecution 
was directed; the confiscation of his property was 
sometimes the only edict of the magistrate; he sat 
in the center of the row of presbyters or on a chair 
above them ; he was the chief preacher"; only he ad- 
ministered communion, or in his absence those 
whom he commissioned; baptism was also mainly 



10 Ep. 63 (62), 14. 



44 Cyprian: The Churchman. 

confined to him; he was judge in disputes and the 
chief office as to disqualifications for Church func- 
tions. Cyprian added nothing to the substance of 
the bishop's power, he only placed it on a religious 
basis. He sanctified it with the halo of the Old 
Testament law. 

How was the bishop elected? The laity gave 
Cyprian to the Church. If the filling the vacancy 
caused by the death of Donatus had been left to the 
clergy, we would never have heard of him. The 
latter thought he was immature in religious expe- 
rience, a novice, and so, according to Paul ( I Tim. 
iii, 6), ineligible for Church office. Cyprian thought 
so himself and declined, wishing an older presbyter 
to be elected. But the people were inexorable. They 
looked upon him as the strongest and wisest min- 
ister in the city, and they would not be refused. 
They surrounded his house, filled all approaches, 
cut off escape, and compelled him to accept. Ac- 
cording to Cyprian there were three or four things 
necessary in every election of bishop : the judgment 
of God, the voice of the people, the choice of the 
bishops of the province, and the testimony of the 
clergy. But what was the relation of each of these 
elements to the other, the relative importance of 
each one, and how each was expressed, we do not 
know. He says it is divine tradition and apostolic 



A Pops. 45 

observance — it was not, Cyprian had no exact his- 
torical knowledge — that "for the proper celebra- 
tions of ordinations all the neighboring bishops of 
the same province shall assemble with that people 
for which a prelate is ordained. And the bishop 
shall be chosen in the presence of the people, who 
have most fully known the life of each one, by the 
suffrage of the brotherhood and by the sentence of 
the bishops assembled." 11 He emphasizes the suf- 
frage of the people, 12 and once the testimony of his 
colleagues. 33 It does not appear that the neighbor- 
ing bishops gave any formal vote to the election of 
Cyprian, nor that his co-presbyters did, but that the 
one decisive factor was the clamant call of the peo- 
ple. In other words he was elected by acclamation 
of the people, which was confirmed by the later 
assent of all the presbyters except five, and by the 
ordination of the bishops. According to Cyprian, 
the assembled bishops had the right of election, with 
the co-operation of the clergy; but as Bohringer 
well says, the election itself depended in the last 
instance upon the consent or veto of the congrega- 
tion. 14 The laity had the first and the last and de- 
cisive voice, though probably did not vote as in a 
formal election. In fact, we do not know from 
Cyprian's Epistles that any one cast a vote. But 

11 Ep. 67, 5. 12 59 (54), 5. 6. 13 44 (40), 2. 

14 Cyprianus, in Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen, 2. Ausg. IV, 841. 



46 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

it is striking that the greatest Churchman of the 
third century was really made a bishop by laymen, 
that there was still existing by the side of the grow- 
ing hierarchy this instructive survival of original 
Congregationalism. 15 

Cyprian was the first pope, that is, the first bishop 
repeatedly called papa, papas, or pope, 16 and that 
too, on the part of the Roman Church. I do not lay 
stress on this, but call attention to it as showing 
that the exclusive use of the word by Rome since 
the decree of Hildebrand, 1073, and the generally 
exclusive use since the eighth century, is on par 
with most of her usurpations. Apparently the first 
bishop to be so called was Heraclas of Alexandria, 17 
who died about 246, the first Roman bishop Marcel- 
linus, 249-304, and in the fourth century bishops o£ 
various sees large and small are called pope. If 
we import the later thought into the word, that is, 
if we think of the pope as the ruling spirit in the 
Church, the Roman presbyters are entirely justified 
in giving the title to him of Carthage, because he 
and no other was pope in the short but troubled 
time of his episcopate. 18 

15 For the part of the laity in the election of bishops, as witnessed by 
Origen, Eusebius, etc., see Haddon, art. Bishop in Diet. Chr. Antiq. i, 214. 

16 Eps. 30 ; 31 (25) ; 36 (29) ; 23 (16) ; 8 (2) ; at beginning. 

17 Ens., H. E. 7, 7. 

18 On the title pope see Benson, 29-31. Mullinger, in Diet. Chr. Ant. 
ii, 1652, 1663-4. 



CHAPTER V. 

BEFORE THE STORM. 

Cyprian became bishop probably in July, 248, 
and the Decian persecution began at the end of 
249 or the beginning of 250. The Church had had 
peace since the death of Sulpicius Severus, Febru- 
ary 4, 211 — almost forty years. What chance for 
quiet growth and development, for missionary work, 
for literary achievements, etc. ? But alas ! this prom- 
ise was not kept, or only partially kept. The Church 
grew, indeed, but at the expense of purity, and there 
was little of literary work between Tertullian and 
Cyprian. Then were laid the seeds of the Novatian 
schism, A time of peace for nation or Church im- 
poses special obligations of watchfulness and dis- 
cipline and self-denial, lest corruptions creep in and 
the inheritance be lost. And in a Catholic Church 
these corruptions are almost inevitable. When sac- 
raments take the place of a transforming faith in a 
personal Savior, when Church absolution takes the 
place of divine forgiveness and conversion, when 

47 



48 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

harmony with the bishop is practically substituted 
for ethical and spiritual harmony of the life with 
God, union with Christ interpreted in terms of union 
with the Church, when Christianity is thus external- 
ized and superficialized as it is in the so-called 
Catholic Churches, a series of miracles is necessary 
to keep the Church pure. That God will not pre- 
vent by extraordinary means what may be avoided 
by the simple paths of His Gospel, history is a wit- 
ness. Look at Russia, to-day, whose battleships are 
furnished with both icons and harlots, or in France 
where priests and mistresses used to jostle each 
other in the corridors of the Most Catholic King. 

In the eighteen months of Cyprian's episcopate 
before the outbreak of the persecution, it was his 
noble aim to purify the Church as well as he could 
by discipline. "Long peace had corrupted/' he said, 
"a divinely delivered discipline ; faith had been tak- 
ing her ease and was half asleep/' 1 First he tried 
to break up the practice of the clergy assuming 
worldly responsibility, whether as tutor or in trades 
or professions. It is well known that for hundreds 
of years it was not uncommon for ministers to be 
engaged in secular occupations, like the local 
preachers of Methodism. "A clergyman, learned 

1 De Lapsis, 5. 



Before the Storm. 49 

in the Word of God/ 7 says an ancient statute, "May 
seek support by work as much as he likes;" and 
again : "A clergyman may satisfy himself with food 
and clothing by working as an artisan or by agri- 
culture, barring detriment to his office." 2 We read 
of one who tended sheep, another (a bishop) a 
weaver, another a shipbuilder, a lawyer, etc. 3 By 
and by this was practically done away by a salary or 
regular Church income. 4 During the peace the 
clergy, including even the bishops, not only worked 
or traded for a living, but pushed their secular work 
with vigor for pure gain, — "they with insatiable 
ardor of covetousness devoted themselves to the in- 
crease of their property." The bishops "despised the 
divine charge, became agents in business, deserted 
their people, wandered about in foreign provinces, 
hunted the markets for gainful merchandise, while 
brethren were starving in the Church. They sought 
to possess money in hoards, they seized estates by 
crafty deceits, they increased their gains by multi- 
plying usuries." 5 

A case was presented to Cyprian of one who in 



2 Statuta Eccl. Antiqua, cc. 51, 52. 

3 Socrates, H. E. 1, 12; Sozomen, 7, 28; Greg. Mag. Ep. 13, 26; see 
note 23 in Hatch, Organization, etc., p. 151 ; Ludlow in Diet. Chr. Ant. I 
409-11 ; Hatch in same, II, 1489-91. 

4 On this see von Schubert's Moller, KG. I, 368-9. 
6 Cypr., De Lapsis, 6. 



50 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

his will had appointed Faustinus, a presbyter, as 
executor (tutor) or curator of his property. The 
bishop meets the case with decision. No offering 
shall be made for the deceased, nor sacrifices cele- 
brated for his repose. The poor fellow must get along 
as best he can in the other world without the prayers 
and offerings of the living. Cyprian refers to a rule 
passed by the bishops excluding ministers from 
serving as executors (though the Roman law made 
the filling of such appointments obligatory) so that 
they "may not be called from their divine adminis* 
tration nor be tied down by worldly anxieties and 
matters." 6 But this severity, though no doubt ef- 
fective for a time, did not at all break up the secular 
work of the clergy. He cites the Levitical tithe, 
argues at this early stage in his usual hierarchical 
way — the absolute distinction between secular and 
sacred, the obligatoriness of the Old Testament law, 
the minister to do only with the altar, — a concep- 
tion "altogether in contradiction to the original 
Christian views and forms of organization." 7 

An interesting question was presented by a let- 
ter from a distant town. It appears an actor had 
been received into the Church, having first, of 



6 Ep. i (65). For offerings for the dead, already in Tertullian, see De 
Monog. io. 7 Bohringer, 816. 



Before; the: Storm. 51 

course, given up his profession. But on the ground 
of necessity of living he had been training boys to 
the same life. The bishop of the little town where 
the actor lived wrote Cyprian asking whether this 
could be allowed. The reply is in the true spirit of 
Tertullian, and in this case in the true spirit of 
Christian. He refers to the "disgraceful and in- 
famous practices of the theater, emasculation of 
boys and men, 8 men putting on women's garments, 
immodest gestures, and the gratification of the de- 
sire by the sins of a corrupted and enervated body." 
If it is a sin for one to act in the theater, is it not to 
teach others the same ? If he is compelled to this by 
poverty, let the Church support him frugally, and if 
the Church is not able, let him come to us. Such was 
the advice of Cyprian. The Church denied baptism 
and communion to frequenters of the theater, not 
to speak of actors, and she did wisely in this, be- 
cause the theater was not only connected with idol- 
atry, but was an inciter and purveyor to sin and 
vice in various and influential ways, — it was then 
and ever has remained the foremost opponent to 



8 The late Bishop A. Cleveland Coxe is authority for the statement 
that in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican the fine music is obtained by re- 
course to this expedient inflicted upon children. Note to his edition ot 
Wallis's transl. of Cyprian, p. 356, note 3. See art. Eunuch in Chambers's 
Encyclopaedia ed. 1893 or later. Cyp. Ep. 2 (60). 



52 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

all the ideals for which the Church stands. 9 Later 
the Church found she could not carry out such 
strict laws, as she finds to-day. The theater was 
too much for her. Then her leaders, like Chrysos- 
tom, Cyril, and Salvian, had to content themselves 
with sharp denunciations of it and warnings 
against it. 

To Christians of to-day, virgins occupying the 
same house with men, often the same room and even 
the same bed, could not be understood. But in the 
early centuries that was a common custom, prob- 
ably due to the necessity of finding homes for con- 
verted girls and women who had been disowned by 
parents. Then, in the exaltation of Christian en- 
thusiasm, in that prophetic ecstasy which charac- 
terized some early Christians, in that exaggerated 
estimate of virginity which was very early intro- 
duced, with the freshness of faith in the power of 
the new life, there can be no doubt that this relation 
of dwelling together of men and women pledged 
to virginity, was often, as Achelis has shown, abso- 
lutely innocent of immorality. But as time passed 
and the old enthusiasm died away, and especially 
as the persecutions ceased and crowds came into the 
Church, it is evident that this spiritual bond did not 



9 See Bingham, Antiquities, bk. u, ch. 5, sections 6, 9; bk. 16, ch. 4, 
section 10; and ch. n. section 12. 



Before: the: Storm. 53 

always remain spiritual. This was recognized by 
the Council of Nicea, A. D. 325, which prohibited 
the practice, 10 as did also that of Carthage of 
348. 11 Cyprian had to meet this scandal, as he 
recognizes it, and he does it in a thorough and 
straightforward manner. He cuts up the whole 
custom, root and branch. Virgins must not even 
live with men in this way, not to speak of anything 
else. Those who have slept with men must be ex- 
amined by midwives before they can receive com- 
munion again. Purity must be kept at all hazards. 
Cyprian's letter is a noble plea for discipline. No 
doubt it had its effect, but the continuance of the 
practice for centuries shows that the question of the 
relation of men to women, of both to pledges to 
virginity, had not been solved by the ancient Cath- 
olic Church, which very early adopted a false and 
unchristian asceticism, and thus helped along the 
condition referred to as well as the corruption with 
which monasticism has made us familiar. Perhaps 
they were too near to the universal pagan customs 
of bathing and sleeping together. A new civiliza- 
tion had to come. 12 



10 Can. 3. 11 Can. 3, 4. 

12 Cyprian Ep. 4 (61). See also Coxe in Ante Nic. Fathers II, 57-8; 
Benson, 54 and notes ; Venables, in Diet. Chr. Antiq. II, 1939-41 ; and esp. 
H. Achelis, Virgines Subintroductae; ein Beitrag, etc., Leipz. 1902. 



54 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

Great Christians from Tertullian to Wesley have 
not considered woman's dress a subject too insig- 
nificant for treatment. Cyprian wrote one of his 
most vigorous treatises on this subject. No doubt 
he had more provocation than Wesley, for heathen 
society fostered adornments, luxurious, excessive, 
unchaste, to which doubtless the eighteenth century 
at its worst could not approach. But many of Ter- 
tullian's and Cyprian's (who borrowed from him 
wholesale) denunciations are as appropriate to-day 
as then. Has God willed, asks Cyprian, who as a 
mere man could not see either the beauty or right of 
self-mutilations and dyeings and the efforts to im- 
prove on God, — has God willed that holes should 
be made in the ears, by which the children should 
be put to pain, so that subsequently heavy beads 
should be hung ? Such arts as the sinning and apos- 
tate angels put forth. It was they who taught 
women to pain the eyes around with a black circle, 
to stain the cheeks with a deceitful red, to change 
the hair, and drive out truth both of face and head. 
Then adulterations and various colorings are lay- 
ing hands on God, whose work is perfect. Cyprian 
lashes all this artificial making-up with burning 
words. In fact, for virgins who are given to Christ 
he repudiates adornments of any kind. Why should 



Bbfors the: Storm. 55 

she walk out adorned? Why with dressed hair, as 
if she either had or sought for a husband? Rather 
let her dread to please, if she is a virgin; let her 
not invite her own risk if she is keeping herself for 
better and divine things. These should also keep 
away from marriage parties, with their lascivious 
talk, with their disgraceful words and drunken ban- 
quets, where the "bride is animated to bear, and the 
bridegroom to dare lewdness. " So also she should 
flee the baths, where modesty is laid aside, vice is en- 
ticed, — these promiscuous baths, "fouler than a 
theater." Is it any wonder the Church mourns 
over her virgins ; hence she groans over their scan- 
dalous and detestable stories; hence the flower of 
her virgins is extinguished. At the close Cyprian 
praises virginity, which is free from the sorrows 
and pains of women, the pangs of child-bearing, the 
worship of husband, which possesses already the 
glory of the resurrection, which passing through the 
world without the contagion of the world is equal 
to the angels of God. 13 

From these earliest writings of Cyprian we can 
readily see the conditions of the Christian Church 
on the eve of the Decian persecution. Some bishops 
were so engrossed in money-making that they neg- 



13 De Hab. Virg. 4, 14, 18, 19, 20, 22. 



56 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

lected their work, some were even usurers. There 
was a free-living bishop who made his office a 
means of gain, ready to abjure the faith on occa- 
sion, and ready to take it up again when danger was 
over. "Cyprian had/' says Augustine, 14 "not a pri- 
vate table, but God's altar in common with his col- 
leagues, — usurers, the insidious, cheats, robbers." 
Some were mixed up with dishonest practices in 
fairs and others in the slave trade of the Sahara. 
"Some were too ignorant to prepare their catechu- 
mens for baptism, or to avoid heretical phrases in 
their public prayers," and too ignorant or too care- 
less not to use in their liturgies the compositions of 
well-known heretics. Among the clergy there were 
makers of idols and compounders of incense, and 
among the laity astrologers and theatrical trainers. 15 
Not a moment too soon did Cyprian come on 
the scene. His remedy was "discipline, — discipline 
the safeguard of hope, the bond of faith, the guide 
of the way of salvation, the stimulus and nourish- 
ment of good dispositions, the teacher of virtue, 
which causes us to abide always in Christ, and to 
live continually for God, and to attain the heavenly 
promises and the divine rewards." 16 The remedy 



14 Aug. De Bap. c. Donat. VII, 45 (89). 

16 Tertullian, De Idolatr. 7, 9 ; Cyp. Ep. 2 (60). 16 De Hab. Virg. x. 



Before; the: Storm. 57 

was good, and woe to the Church where discipline 
is a lost art. But the disease was deep, and Cyprian's 
remedy touched the surface only. What was needed 
was a true Christianity. That was then historically 
impossible, but a storm was at the doors which did 
the work in another fashion. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE DECIAN PERSECUTION. 

Why did Rome persecute the Christians ? That 
is a question whose answer at first seems easy, but 
the more one studies it the more difficult it becomes. 
The law of the Twelve Tables forbade strictly any- 
one to worship strange gods unless they were 
adopted by the State. But what would be done 
when foreign lands were conquered? Would their 
gods be virtually adopted by Rome, who took in, 
as a matter of fact, the whole Greek pantheon? 
Now as it never was an offense for the native to 
worship his native gods, it is evident that Rome 
either winked at these strange cults or in effect 
adopted them as her own. The former was the 
fact. The Isis worshiper had long been domiciled 
in the capital, and, excepting the bloody Druid re- 
ligion of Gaul, Rome never interfered in the slight- 
est with the aboriginal faith of her conquered lands. 
But what was the matter with Christianity that it 
could not share a like toleration ? Chiefly this, that 

58 



The Decian Persecution. 59 

it claimed to be a monotheistic religion, the only 
true, absolute religion, and a missionary religion 
too, destined for universal conquest, whom every 
man must receive to be saved. Well, what of it? 
Why could not Rome stand that ? Because her own 
religion was identified with the State, glorified and 
made divine by the State, which in its turn it glori- 
fied and made divine. It was the State in its god- 
ward or religious aspect. The State found its head, 
its incarnation, in the emperor, who thus became 
himself divine. Now the polytheistic religions 
found no fault in this. Each one was a State re- 
ligion, and they did not stumble in acknowledging 
the supreme Roman religion over all. For this 
reason the boasted tolerance of Rome stopped at 
Christianity. As a great Church historian says, the 
"tolerance of the State had polytheism as a presup- 
position." 1 But Judaism was monotheistic, and 
that was tolerated. Yes, but Judaism was a na- 
tional faith which did not try to make proselytes, 
and which as to its chief center of worship had 
ceased to exist after A. D. 70. It did not present 
at all the same problem to the State as Christianity. 
It is true that popular clamor imputed fearful 



1 Von Schubert's Moller, Kirchengeschichte, I, 181 (1902). So al«0 
Harnack in the Hauck-Herzog. 3 Aufl. Ill, 827-8 (1897). 



60 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

crimes to the Christians, — murder, incest, child-eat- 
ing, and abominable deeds of darkness, and it may 
be there were cases in which the adverse decision 
of the magistrate was determined by these alleged 
crimes. But it is a fact that they play no part — 
or at least a very small part — in our historical 
sources. Almost always the action turns on the 
charge of sacrilege and treason (lese majeste), and 
the former because of the latter. The accused is 
asked to sacrifice to the gods or to the emperor's 
image, — one or both, and it made no difference 
which. If he refused the former, he was guilty of 
sacrilege (sacrilegium) , if the latter, majestas or 
treason, but every time the former had fatal conse- 
quences only because it implied in the mind of the 
pagan Roman the latter. As a mere religion Chris- 
tianity might have been tolerated. Most of its re- 
ligious peculiarities were a matter of indifiference to 
the authorities, and its moral teachings often com- 
mended it to them. It was only when the political 
side of its monotheism came out that the sword 
fell. When Tertullian in his powerful Apology 
speaks of the Roman religion as a religion, he 
treats it with jokes, scorn and derision: he knew he 
could do that. But when he comes to the political 
side of it in its bearing upon the Christians he 



The Decian Persecution. 6i 

labors hard and soberly to show that the political 
side receives no injury, that the Christians are loyal 
and reverent to the emperor. Though they will not 
offer to him, they pray for him, and are absolutely 
faithful to him in every political relation. 

It must be remembered that until Decius there 
were no express laws against the Christians as such. 
Their trials proceeded always under the general 
police or criminal jurisprudence of the empire; 
which was not closely defined or limited, but was 
general and elastic, and left large play to the in- 
dividual judgment or caprice of the president of 
the court who was the prefect, proconsul, or gov- 
ernor. The civil law of Rome was fixed fast, with 
well understood rules; the criminal law was not. 
It was something like the police power of a modern 
State, which can soon override the people's lib- 
erties in case of assumed necessity, like an uproar, 
mutiny, riot, etc., or like the power of a ship cap- 
tain. For this reason a tolerant and free thinking 
governor, or even a careless and Gallio-like one, 
could let the Christians go if he thought there were 
no immediate danger to the State ; while an upright 
and strict ruler, patriotic and devoted to the na- 
tional ideals, could easily set the forces of persecu- 
tion at work. Strictly speaking, as Harnack says, 



62 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

there were no persecutions (except perhaps that of 
Nero) in ancient times. They were always covered 
by the general law of police — a nation's law of self- 
preservation. But emperors and governors would 
interpret and apply the law according to their char- 
acter or disposition, or according to circumstances, 
the local situation, etc. Popular clamor, too, played 
a far larger part than it ought in both pagan and 
Christian Rome's persecutions, as it plays to-day in 
lynch-law and other outbreaks in the United States. 
At any rate, all can understand from this why per- 
secutions were sporadic and intermittent, why there 
were long stretches of time with comparative peace, 
when the Church therefore grew with leaps and 
bounds. Probably there was not a decade, perhaps 
not a year, without its persecutions; still up to the 
time of Decius no general or far-reaching measures 
of repression were undertaken. Origen says that 
only a few suffered for the Christian cause. 2 "In 
increasing measure," says Harnack, "Christians 
were in all conditions in life and in all professions, 



2 He was writing about 245, and his words are : " For in order to re- 
mind others that by seeing a few engaged in the struggle for their religion 
they also might be better fitted to despise death, some on special occasions, 
and these individuals, which could be easily numbered, endured death for 
the sake of Christianity, — God not permitting the whole nation to be ex- 
terminated, but desiring that it should continue, and that the whole world 
should be filled with this salutary and religious doctrine," — Contra. Cels, 
3,8. 



The De;cian Persecution. 63 

whose Christian position was notorious 3 without a 
hair of their head being crumpled; on the other 
hand, at times, in some provinces (at the discretion 
of the governor), and under some emperors, they 
had to suffer severely." 4 

The Samson athlete, Emperor Maximin the 
Thracian (235-8), was the first to issue an edict 
which had for its object the total destruction of the 
Church as an organization by the destruction of its 
officers. Happily his edict was still-born. It was 
left to Decius (249-51) to break the long peace, 
and to inaugurate the most widespread and relent- 
less persecution which had been known up to his 
time. I should have said that in these trials for 
sacrilege and (religious) treason, not only did the 
president wait for some popular impulse or clamor 
or appearance of sedition, and, after Trajan, uni- 
formly demand specific charges, though he could 
go on his own initiative if he wished, in the trials 
themselves much was also left to the discretion of 
the court. There were no binding forms in this 
police court, no universally recognized precedents. 
The trial might not take over five minutes, — ap- 
parently the last hearing of Cyprian did not. Are 
you a Christian? Yes. Will you offer to the gods 

3 Ter., Ap. 1,42. 4 Hauck-Herzog, 3. Aufl. Ill, 829. 



64 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

and to the emperor? No. Let him be punished. 
Sometimes other forms were used. Almost always 
the accused could immediately vindicate his loyalty 
by then and there offering to the gods and to the 
emperor's image, or by swearing by the genius of 
the emperor. When he did he was immediately set 
free, though even this was in part at the discretion 
of the court. He could be examined by torture, and 
in the Decian outbreak that horrible method both 
of securing evidence and of punishing was fre- 
quently used. As to punishment, if found guilty, 
much was also left free. Death was the normal, 
by beheading, by crucifixion, by being thrown to 
wild beasts, by starving and other prison tortures. 
The Roman citizen gained no advantage in trials 
for sacrilege and ma jest as; if guilty he could be 
burned or tortured to death as quickly as a bar- 
barian, though the judge might respect his rank 
and citizenship and order beheading. But here 
again the president was free. He was not abso- 
lutely compelled to sentence to death, he could im- 
prison, or banish, or sentence to the mines (gen- 
erally the Sardinian mines, and a fearful punish- 
ment). He could, and often did, exhort to peni- 
tence, defer the trial, and by various means, fair 
and foul, induce recantation. Strange uncertainties 



The: Decian Persecution. 65 

hung around these Roman criminal-police trials. 
Did these uncertainties make the Christian's lot 
lighter or harder? As to maidens or women, it 
was wild beasts, burning, imprisonment, banish- 
ment, or often houses of ill-fame. 

Decius was born near Sirmium from a Roman 
or Romanized family, was governor of Dacia and 
Moesia under Philip the Arabian, was commissioned 
against the Goths, called to the empire by his troops, 
and defeated and slew Philip, his predecessor, at 
Verona, 249. What led him to come out against 
the Christians is not clear. From hints here and 
there we gather that wrath and jealousy filled him 
because the national worship was being pushed in 
the background by the new faith, 5 for which he 
must therefore have had a genuine regard. He 
would rather have seen a rival prince than a priest 
of God established in Rome. 6 He was especially 
furious against the priests, says Cyprian (tyrannus 
infestus sacerdotibus), and Gregory of Nyssa adds 
that he tried to break up the whole organization of 
the Church. 7 From this it appears that the growth 
of Church government in a Catholic direction, a 
growth which had been stimulated so greatly by 



6 Greg. Nyss. De Vita Greg. Thaum., Migne (Greek) 46, 944. 
6 Cypr. Ep. 55 (51), 9. 7 Greg. Nyss. Ibid. 946. 

5 



66 Cyprian : Th£ Churchman. 

the heresies of the second century, which had now 
reached a climax in the close world-wide network 
of deacons, priests, and bishops, and which even 
now gave to the bishop in Rome a moral supremacy, 
though more in high-sounding words than in sub- 
stance, this spiritual kingdom which stood over 
against the empire, aggressive, infectious, penetrat- 
ing, a State within a State — it was this organization 
which excited the jealousy and fear of the emperor 
and his censor Valerian, his adviser and right hand 
man, and finally his successor on the throne and on 
the track of the Christians. Besides he looked upon 
the clergy as in a sense partisans of his murdered 
predecessor, Philip the Arabian. Then the millennial 
anniversary of the founding of Rome, celebrated 
by that emperor with pomp and games, April 21, 
248, served to deepen and clarify the national con- 
sciousness, and to sharpen it against those who 
could not join in the festivities with any heart. 8 

The policy of opportunism which had ruled from 
Trajan (98ff) to himself was brushed aside. The 
first determined, systematic, and general measures 
against the Christians were set on foot in the epoch- 
making edict of 250, Its wording is lost, but its 



8 On these millennial celebrations see Gibbon, Ch. VII, Ed. Smith, 
I, 459-60. 



The Decian Persecution. 67 

purport is all too well known. All Christians, with- 
out regard to age and sex, shall be asked to sacri- 
fice and to take part in the sacrificial meal ; torture 
shall be used if necessary; if the Christians deny 
the faith the matter is left to the discretion of the 
judge; but it is not left to his discretion whether he 
shall carry out the decree, for that is secured by 
threats of punishment, and withal by a special sac- 
rificial commission. 9 Sometimes those who con- 
fessed were sent away to immediate death by cruci- 
fixion, fire, beheading, stoning, or hunger; at other 
times they were labored with or imprisoned, hoping 
for recantation. In prison it was expected to break 
them down by hunger, thirst, heat, or other tortures, 
soastosave them at last. Celerinus at Rome was even 
personally besought by either Decius or Valerian 
to abandon his faith, but without success. "He lay 
in punishments, but the stronger for them ; impris- 
oned, but greater than those who imprisoned him ; 
lying prostrate, but loftier than those who stood; 
bound, but firmer than the chains ; judged, but more 
sublime than those who judged him," etc. 10 Among 
the bishops slain was Fabian in Rome, Alexander in 
Jerusalem, Babylas in Antioch; while others saved 



9 Cypr. Ep. 43 (39) : *' Five leaders lately associated with a magistrate 
in an edict." See also the libelli quoted below. 10 Ep. 39 (33), 2. 



68 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

themselves by flight, as Cyprian in Carthage, Diony- 
sius in Alexandria, Chseremon of Nilus, and Greg- 
ory the Wonder Worker in Neo Csesarea. The 
goods of the fled were confiscated, and many of 
the fugitives were destroyed by the sufferings of 
the way. 

It is unnecessary to say that, with a spiritual 
condition of the Church such as I have already 
described, thousands fell away. Would more stand 
to-day? The majority of the congregation in Car- 
thage immediately disowned Christianity. They could 
not quickly enough crowd around the officers and 
get certificates of quittance. 11 When the magis- 
trates wanted to put off the examinations with the 
coming on of evening, the Christians could hardly 
submit to the delay. Cyprian scorches them with 
burning words for this unseemly haste spiritually to 
destroy themselves. "Why bring with you, O 
wretched man, a sacrifice? Why immolate a vic- 
tim? You yourself have come to the altar an of- 
fering, you yourself have come a victim ; there you 
have immolated upon salvation your hope; there 
you have burnt up your faith in the deadly fires." 12 
It was the same in other cities, though in Rome 
more stood firm. "The Church in Rome stands 



11 Cyp. de Lapsis, 7. 12 Ibid. 8. 



The Decian Persecution. 69 

firmly in faith, though some have been driven by 
terror/' 13 It was a universal picture of devastation 
— "look upon the world devastated, and thrown 
everywhere are the relics and ruins of the fallen." 14 
Cyprian sees himself placed "among the ruins of the 
wailing, the relics of the fearing, the great slaughter 
of the yielding, and the little firmness of those stand- 
ing." 15 It was a world-wide sorrow. The confess- 
ors felt themselves "placed among various and 
manifold griefs, on account of the present desola- 
tions of many brethren throughout almost the whole 
world." 16 

Perhaps worse than straightforward denial was 
the bribery of corrupt officials to place the names 
of the bribe-givers on the list of the offering ones 
(acta facientes), generally by the presentation of 
an officially certified paper that such an one had 
sacrificed (libellatici), by which personal appear- 
ance before the authorities was avoided. Cyprian 
says these must repent exactly the same as though 
they had sacrificed, 17 though he describes some of 
them as not going to the heathen altars through 
conscientious motives, and as sending a friend to 
the officers with the frank avowal that they are 
Christians and can not come to the demons' "altars/' 

13 Cyp. Ep. 8 (2), 2. 14 Ibid. 30, 5. £5 Ibid. 11 (7), 8. 

16 Ibid. 31 (25), 1. 17 De Lapsis, 27. 



70 Cyprian : Th£ Churchman. 

and that therefore they "pay a price for not doing 
what is not lawful for me to do." 18 This shows 
the easy corruptibility of the pagan officers, who 
almost tempted the Christians to buy their lives 
("when the opportunity of securing a certificate 
was offered"). Let it be said to Cyprian's credit 
that his ethical sense here was perfectly sound. 19 

Who would have believed that after centuries 
and more there would have been unearthed these 
very tell-tale certificates? Did those poor Chris- 
tians who thus, moved by mortal fear, purchased 
their safety ever think that their falseness would 
come forth in the far-off years and condemn them 
out of the very sands? An interesting illustration 
of the solemn word, "There is nothing hid that shall 
not be revealed." 20 In 1893 and 1894 two of these 
testimonials were dug up in the province of 
Faioum, southwest of Cairo. One is in the 
Breugsch collection of the Berlin Museum, the other 
in that of Archduke Rainer in Vienna. They are 
little pieces of papyrus leaf, written in Greek, much 
damaged after their long waiting for the light. 
They have been skillfully integrated and deciphered, 
one (the Brugsch) by Dr. Fritz Krebs, the other by 
Professor K. Wessely. The Rainer papyrus is ac- 

!8 Ep. 55 (5i), 14. 19 Ep. 30, 3. 

20 Matt, x, 26 ; Mark iv, 22 ; Luke xii, 2. 



Ths Dscian Persecution. 71 

cessible to our readers in the Hurst "History of the 
Christian Church," I, 243, and I copy here a trans- 
lation of the Krebs : 

"To the commissioners of sacrifice of the village 
of Alexander's island from Aurelius Diogenes (son 
of) Satabus, of the village of Alexander's Island. 
About 72. Scar on right eyebrow. I was both con- 
stant in ever sacrificing to the gods, and now in 
your presence, according to the precepts, I sacri- 
ficed and drank and tasted of the victims, and I 
beseech you to certify this. May you ever prosper. 
I, Aurelius Diogenes have delivered this." (Then 
follows in another handwriting, hardly readable, 
the certificate of the officers) "I Aurelius...... 

( ? saw) him sacrificing. I, Nys (thes, son of) .... 

non have signed. 

"First year of the Emperor Caesar. 

Gaius Messius Quintus 
Trajanus Decius Pius 
Felix Augustus. 
2d day of Epiphi. 21 (June 26, 250.) 

21 For the Brugsch papyrus see Krebs in Sitzungsbenchte d. Konig. 
Preus. Akademie d. Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 30. Nov. 1893 (47, 100) ; Har- 
nack in Theol. Litz. 20. Jan. 1894, 38-41 ; Kruger, Die neuen Funde auf dem 
Gebiete der altesten Kirchengeschichte (1889-1898), Giesen 1898, 17,18; 
J. Wordsworth in The Guardian, Jan. 31, 1894, 167. For the Rainer see 
Wessely in Sitzungsb. d. K. Akad. Wissensch., Phil. Hist. Classe, 141-B 
Wien. 1894; Harnack in Theol. Litz. 17. Marz, 1894, 162-3; A.J. Mason 
in Guardian, March 21, 1894, 431. For both see Appendix B. in Benson, 
Cyprian 541-4. 



72 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

But there were thousands of brave ones who 
would not deny their Lord. The Martyr Acts give 
us accounts of Pionius and his companions in 
Smyrna, of Maximus, of Lucianus, and Marcianus, 
and other names are in the letter of Dionysius to 
Eusebius 22 and in the letters of Cyprian. The 
prisons were full of sufferers, and many, especially 
the clergy, were put to death. We must never 
think, however, of the wholesale executions — not 
to speak of massacres — which characterized the 
Roman Catholic suppression of the Protestants. 
Nothing like the rescript of Trajan is known in 
these later annals, and the methodical and carefully 
legal, though relentless, forms of Decius and Gale- 
rius would have seemed almost like Paradise to those 
who suffered in the wholesale butcheries of the six- 
teenth century. And to the poor Jews of the Middle 
Ages, the worst Roman emperor by the side of 
their Christian persecutors shone white and fair. 

We need not be surprised if the devastating 
effects of the Decian onslaught made a profound 
impression on the imagination of the Church. It 
reminded Dionysius of Alexander of the last times 
before the coming of the Lord; 23 Lucian calls De- 



22 Eus. H. E. 6, 40-42. For the martyrologies see Ruinart and the se- 
lections of von Gebhardt, 1902, and Preuschen, 1905. 

23 Eus. 6, 41, 10. 



The: Ddcian Persecution. 73 

cius the "pioneer of antichrist ;" 24 Hilary of Poitiers 
places his persecution together with that of Nero ; 25 
Optatus of Mileve thinks of the four beasts of Dan- 
iel, and says : "The first beast was as a lion : this 
was the persecution under Decius and Valerian ;" 26 
but the worst was the judgment of Lactantius — 
"the execrable animal Decius." 27 

Professor Victor Schultze makes the point that 
this persecution can not strictly be called a general 
one, even if it was so intended. The imperial order 
was not caried out in some places, and in others 
only apparently. It was chiefly confined to the 
cities, though not altogether, as the libelli just re- 
ferred to show. "The unquiet political relations did 
not allow systematic measures strongly and con- 
sistently to be carried through, and these measures 
therefore never went farther than having the effect 
of a quickly passing convulsion/' 28 



24 In Cyp. Ep. 22 (21), 1: metator antichristi. Metator is a land 
measurer, and sometimes the surveyor who goes before to measure land for 
the camp. 25 Contra Constantium, 4. 26 De Schism. Don. 3, 8. 

27 De Mort. Persec, 4. 28 Art. Decius in Hauck-Kerzog, 3. Aufl. IV, 528. 



CHAPTER VIL 

A NEW QUESTION IN DISCIPLINE. 

Wh£n the storm burst Cyprian secured himself 
by flight. The heathens of the city cried out vio- 
lently in the circus and on the streets, "Cyprian to 
the lions !" His presence in the city made the storm 
heavier for the Christians, and to relieve them, to 
save himself for the congregation at a difficult time 
when they specially needed his guiding and con- 
trolling hand, he obeyed the Lord's command, 1 and 
fled for refuge elsewhere. His hiding place was a 
secret to the authorities, though known to faithful 
friends, through whom by letters Cyprian exercised 
a careful and conscientious oversight over his flock. 
However little we can blame him, his flight gave to 
the five dissatisfied presbyters a handle for criti- 
cism. They accused him of cowardice and aban- 
doning his flock, and what was specially odious, 
they wrote to other Churches, especially to Rome, 
and placed his flight in the worst light. Rome had 

1 Matt, x, 23 ; cf. John xviii, 8. 

74 



A New Question in Discipline. 75 

lost her own bishop by martyrdom, and doubtless 
there were some there who would wonder at this 
apparent lack of fidelity. They therefore wrote him 
a letter, which did contain indirect and yet not in- 
distinct reflections. 2 Cyprian defended himself in 
a letter to his clergy and later to Cornelius in Rome, 
showed the motive which led him to flee, and besides 
that already mentioned, referred to visions and 
Divine commands. 

A new question now arose — that is, what is to 
be done with apostates who desire to return to the 
Church ? This, of course, was not absolutely a new 
question, because in every persecution there had 
been such cases. But in the thirty-eight years of 
peace a new generation had come on the scene. Be- 
sides never before had the Church been struck so 
hard, so suddenly and so universally, and there were 
crowds of lapsed in nearly every large town. When 
the persecution ceased after eighteen months, and 
even before it ceased, many of the unfaithful ones 
desired to be taken back. With thousands clamor- 
ing for admission, the question was by no means so 
easy as when the Church had only to impose pen- 
ance on a few. Still more, the question was com- 
plicated by martyr certificates, of which later. 

2 Ep. 8 (2). 



76 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

What would the apostolic Church have done 
with one who in storm of persecution had gone back 
to heathenism, and later desired to return? After 
penitence, he would have been received back into 
full membership. By and by there grew up an ar- 
tificial distinction in regard to both virtue and sin, 
at which perhaps asceticism lay at the root. Instead 
of a heart converted to God and serving Him gladly 
in the joy of a new life, the Catholic conception of 
morality grew up which looked upon perfection as 
the rare attainment of few, notably the abstinent. 
Then certain sins came to be regarded as so heinous 
that when once a Christian had committed them, 
though penitence was required and final salvation 
not denied, yet the Church herself would not re- 
ceive the sinner into her ranks again. By the end 
of the second century this appears to have been the 
rule. Already in Hermas, about 150, the adulterer 
can only be received back after the first offense. 
The second cuts him off finally. 3 Besides, Christ 
is coming soon, and he will decide the matter Him- 
self. 

With the exaggerated emphasis on baptism, due 
also to the Catholic evolution, it came to be con- 



3 Mand. 4 : 1, 8. For cropping out of Catholic ideas, see Did. 6, Anc. 
Horn. (=" 2 Clem ") 7, 3, Herm. Sim. 5, 3. 



A New Question in Discipline. 77 

sidered that while baptism wiped away effectually 
all former scores, grave sins committed after bap- 
tism could find no formal forgiveness here, though 
the Church would still pray for the offender and 
hope for the best from God. 4 This conception was 
all the harder, as Moeller well says, for with the 
consolidation of the societies into the Catholic 
Church, which was going on in the latter part of 
the second century and all through the third, ex- 
clusion from one society meant exclusion from the 
whole Church. 5 The three sins which fell into the 
category of mortal irremissible sins were murder, 
adultery, and apostasy to heathenism, and perhaps 
sins nearly related to them. As early as 177, at 
Lyons and Vienne in France, it would appear that 
the guilt of apostasy could be wiped out only by a 
manful confession at the same or a subsequent per- 
secution, 6 though at Corinth at the same time ap- 
parently all sinners could be restored. 7 At about 
200 there was a regular scale for penance and pun- 
ishments; the lighter was confession of ordinary 
sins and the daily prayer for forgiveness, with 
warning and correction; the heavier involved ex- 
clusion, followed with severe confessions and pen- 



4 Iren. 4: 27, 2; Ter., De Pud. 7. 5 Von Schubert-Moller, KG. 

I, 279. 6 Eus. 5 : i, 33, 46. 7 Ibid. 4 : 23, 6. 



78 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

ances, but ending in return to Church fellowship; 
the heaviest of all (for the three deadly sins men- 
tioned above) was exclusion from the Church for 
all time, the offender being placed in the ranks of 
lifelong penitents and the final decision being re- 
ferred to God. 

Along with this there came the idea of merit, 
that pardon might be more readily received by as- 
cetic virtues, and that these might compensate for 
the graver sins and their eternal punishment. 8 So 
sprung up the idea of satisfaction, which hoped from 
, fasting, kneeling, wearing sackcloth and ashes, etc., 
to receive special grace and favor, 9 whereas at the 
beginning the self-denials served only to prove the 
earnestness of the penitent. The two great Roman 
jurists, Tertullian and Cyprian, helped to bring in 
this legal idea, — an externalization of the relations 
between man and God which has ruled Latin theol- 
ogy from that day to this. If therefore the sinner 
could in some way get these penitential works to his 
credit, the way would be opened for his readmit- 
tance, even if he were a mortal sinner. 

I said a moment ago that the case was compli- 
cated in Carthage by the letters of the martyrs. 
These were simply certificates or briefs issued by 



8 Ter. De Poen. 9. 9 De Poen. 9 ; De Pud. 5 ; De Pat. 13. 



A Nsw Question in Discipline;. 79 

confessors and martyrs to the effect that the person 
receiving the letter had done penance for his apos- 
tasy from Christianity, and praying or demanding 
that he be taken in again. The lapsed thronged 
around the cells of the sufferers, and by impor- 
tunity, flatteries, weeping, etc., obtains from them 
those letters of peace, or martyr's certificates of 
favor. But why did they go to these ? Here again 
we must go back a little. At the beginning the 
congregation received the penitent acting through 
the president or elders. 10 But the apostles and 
prophets, as special bearers of the Spirit, were al- 
ways looked upon as competent to represent the 
society in these or other functions, and if any pre- 
cedence was granted, it was these and not the elders 
or bishops who enjoyed it. 11 Now after these char- 
ismatic offices of apostles and prophets had van- 
ished, martyrs or confessors came to be regarded as 
having authority something similar, inasmuch as 
they had stood the highest test of Christianity in the 
face of threatened death, and thus proved that the 
power of the Spirit specially dwelt in them. 12 They 
therefore could forgive sins or mediate the forgive- 
ness of the society. Inasmuch as martyrdom itself 



10 Ter. Ap. 39. 11 1 Cor. v, 3, 4. Did. 10, 7. 

12 Hip. De Christ, et Antichrist. $9 ; Hermas, Vis. 3, 5. 



80 Cyprian : The: Churchman. 

wiped away the stains of the worst sins/ 3 it created 
merit in overabundance, from which it could be 
communicated to the needy. 14 

One can readily see, therefore, how the martyrs' 
letters of peace came to play such a large part in the 
Decian persecution, and how there might arise a 
jealousy on the part of the bishops in regard to 
the too zealous exercise of their prerogatives. Lit- 
tle by little, but with the relentlessness of an on- 
coming tide, the standing office, especially that of 
bishop, replaced the free charismatic office of apostle 
and prophet. By the time the second century had 
passed this substitution was well-nigh complete. By 
the bishop's mouth the society proclaimed to the sin- 
ner forgiveness ot excommunication. He had 
taken into his hands the watching over both doctrine 
and life. He forgave the lighter sins; he was, in 
fact, the doorkeeper of the Church. 15 At the bot- 
tom Tertullian always looked upon the society itself 
as proper possessor of the power of the keys, 16 but 
with that the bishops, as the successors of the apos- 
tles, were generally thought of as those who had the 
right of holding and loosing sins. As a matter of 
course, the more the official importance of the 
bishop, the objective worth of his office as mediat- 

13 Ter., De Pud. 22. 14 Eus. H. E. 5 : 2, 6, 7, 

16 Ter., De Pud. 14, 18. 16 Ibid. 21. 



A N£w Question in Discipline. 8i 

ing salvation, waxed, the more his real importance 
as a man representing the holiness of the Gospel, 
his subjective character of moral purity, waned. 
Office took the place of character. "The bishops' 
office was the natural ally of lax penitential disci- 
pline/' 17 

It is interesting to see the mixing of these two 
streams in Tertullian. He considered everything a 
heavy sin which carries with it an injury of the con- 
gregation as the temple of God, 18 and he ap- 
propriates the utterance of the Paraclete that the 
Church has a right to forgive sins because she has 
the Spirit in her prophets, though from pedagogic 
motives, she actually does not do it. 19 Idolatry, 
adultery, and murder are unforgivable sins, so far 
as Churchly recognition is concerned. 20 The bishop 
as the organ of the society has the right to forgive 
lighter sins (delicta leviora), that is, those which do 
not belong to the three major. 21 

A new stage enters with Callistus, bishop of 
Rome, who in 217-8 peremptorally issued an edict 
in which on his own motion he said : "To those who 
have done penance I remit the sins of adultery and 
fornication." 22 This novel decree was all the more 



17 Von Schubert-Moller, I, 282. 18 De Pud. 19. Cf. the 7 cap- 

ital sins in Adv. Marc. 4, 9. 19 De Pud. 21. 20 Ibid. 1, 4. 

2i Ibid. 18. 22 Ibid. 1. 

6 



82 Cyprian: The) Churchman. . 

offensive on account of the history of the man who 
gave it, — a slave and runaway defrauder, deported to 
the Sardinian mines for his crimes. 23 In this decree, 
while admitting that the rights of the congregation 
and of the martyrs must be preserved, Callistus 
says that the bishop is the only possessor of the 
power of the keys in virtue of his apostolic suc- 
cession. This leads Tertullian to scorn with cut- 
ting words the assumption of the "apostolicus," and 
to reply that as little as the bishops have prophecy 
and miraculous power, so little have they power of 
binding and loosing, but rather the prophets. 24 
This union of hierarchical claims with loose dis- 
cipline brought in by the former scoundrel and thief, 
Bishop Callistus, of Rome, set the pace for Roman 
Catholic history. It was a principle of Callistus that 
no bishop could be deposed even for mortal sin, and 
that the Church must necessarily be composed of 
sinners, as the tares grew with the wheat. 25 This 
meant in fact a complete transformation of the idea 
of the Church. In pJace of the apostolic thought of 
the Church as a body of holy people, "called to be 
saints," the Church became an institution of salva- 
tion, in which by an objective holy office the work 



23 Hip. Ref. 9, 12. 24 That is, the Motanist prophets, De Pud. 

ai. The Montanists kept up the old institution of the prophets, which the 
general Church had allowed to lapse. 25 Hip. Ref. 9, 12. 



A New Question in Discipline. 83 

of instruction is carried on for the sinful members 
of the society. "The Church is" — not the saints, the 
believing members of Christ — but, "the number of 
the bishops." 26 With this elevation of the bishops 
as the teachers and leaders of the societies, comes 
also with Callistus the first use of Matt, xvi, 18, as 
the exclusive property of the Roman see. So his 
peremptory decision is the preparation for the 
Roman primacy, and as von Schubert well says, the 
scornful pleasantries of Tertullian when he derides 
his brother at Rome, — "pontifex maximus is the 
bishop of bishops" 27 — is a "prophecy of the future." 



26 See Tertullian, De Pud. 21 ; von Schubert-Moller, I, 28 

27 De Pud. 1. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CYPRIAN, THE LAPSED, AND THE 
CHURCH IN CARTHAGE. 

Th£ treatment of apostates to heathenism at 
Carthage is one of the most difficult questions in 
Church history. It has to be worked out with in- 
finite patience from the Epistles of Cyprian, and to 
arrange these epistles in order of time is itself a per- 
plexing problem. Thanks to Cyprian experts like 
P'echtrup, Otto Ritschl, Benson, and Karl Muller, 
we have now a light and broad path through this 
thorny thicket. In this chapter I shall follow the 
guide of Professor Karl Muller, formerly of Bres- 
lau, now of Tubingen, who, I think, gives the clear- 
est and most satisfactory statement. 1 

First, as to terms used. Those who were im- 
prisoned or banished for their faith were called 
confessors by Cyprian. When tortures were used, 



1 " Die Bussinstitution in Karthago unter Cyprian," in Zeitschrift 
fiir Kirchengeschichte, XVI, 1-44, 187-219 (1895). 

84 



Cyprian, th# Lapsed. 85 

which was frequently done, especially the laceration 
of the iron claw, under which death sometimes came 
as a welcome relief, the sufferers were called mar- 
tyrs, a term which was also used of confessors who 
die for any reason. Later Cyprian employed the 
same word to designate those banished to the mines, 
but under the expectation of their death. 

Now what was the cause of the trouble between 
Cyprian and some in his Church? The ordinary 
treatment of the lapsed, as we saw in the last chap- 
ter, was simple exclusion — nottfrom the prayers and 
sympathies of the Church, but from readmittance. 
But a new element came in when the martyrs and 
even confessors gave to the deniers of Christ libelli, 
or letters of peace, testifying to their penitence, for- 
giving their sins in effect if not in form, and peti- 
tioning for their admission. It is unfortunate that 
the papyrus hunters have not dug up a libellus of 
this kind, so that we do not know exactly their tenor. 
On account of the relation of the martyrs to the 
Spirit referred to before, 2 it was understood that 
they could give these letters of forgiveness, and that 
such letters would be favorably considered. But 
not only did those expecting death give the letters, 



2 " Die Bussinstitution in Karthago unter Cyprian," in Zeitschrift 
fiir Kirchengeschichte, XVI, 1-44, 187-219 (1895.) 



86 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

but non-tortured confessors who did not expect 
death. Later the confessors united and gave letters 
to all the fallen, to go into effect in case they (the 
confessors) died. If they did not die, the lapsed in- 
voked the general grant of peace given in the name 
of the martyr Paulus. This right of the martyrs to 
forgive mortal sin was a survival of the old power of 
the prophets, and excited no special comment, — not 
at least till Callistus struck at the martyrs in favor of 
the bishops, so that the custom soon came to be for 
readmission to be carried out by the bishops and 
congregation alone, though in Carthage still with 
the co-operation of martyrs. 

Cyprian's legal training and conservative spirit 
made him cling to the martyr's prerogative. No 
lapsed shall be taken in again who is not supported 
by the intercession of martyrs. And after he had 
determined, according to the example of Rome, 
whose decision ordinarily had great weight with 
him, that mortal sinners could be received again, he 
made the condition that they must show a martyr's 
letter. But this at first only had reference to tho^e 
lapsed who were sick unto death. For the others 
Cyprian said that they must wait until the bishops 
were back from their hiding places and could hold 
a council in safety, when they would decide what 



Cyprian, the: Lapsed. 87 

weight would be accorded to the martyrs' and con- 
fessors' letters to the general run of the lapsed. 

In this the martyrs agreed. It does not appear 
(contrary to Ritschl) that Cyprian and the mar- 
tyrs were fundamentally at variance, or that the lat- 
ter expected letters to be immediately acted upon; 
but rather that they should wait till the persecution 
was over, the lapsed assembled, and investigation 
made into each case. The old Callistian emphasis 
on the bishop was thus completely at home in Car- 
thage. What Cyprian is anxious for is not that the 
martyrs should not have all their rights, but that 
moral discipline should be guarded. When the con- 
fessors communicate to Cyprian (Ep. 23 [16]) 
that they have granted peace to all the lapsed, he 
does not see in that a slap at himself, but he fears 
a despising of his exhortations to moderation in re- 
gard to libelli and of evangelical principle in re- 
gard to discipline. Lucian, the principal confessor, 
does not know the Holy Scriptures (Ep. 27 
[22] ), — right principles as to discipline. The thing 
will cause hate and difficulties among the lapsed, 
and the bishop's strictures and reserve will be seen 
in bad contrast to the large-heartedness of the con- 
fessors. It is only the universality with which peace 
is there given which appears to Cyprian the danger: 



88 Cyprian: Thd Churchman. 

it threatens to tear discipline to pieces and endan- 
gers the bishop's moral position. The Confessors 
do not threaten in Ep. 23 (16) to withdraw com- 
munion from Cyprian, nor do they understand any- 
thing more than that the bishops must act on 
their pardons after sufficient penance on the part of 
the lapsed, and that these pardons can come into 
force only at the end of the persecution. Nor do 
they blame him for his flight. 3 The confessors had 
never taken up churchly communion with the fallen, 
to whom they had granted peace. The bishops must 
first speak, then comes peace. 

Now what was the attitude of the presbyters in 
Carthage to this question ? Without waiting for the 
decision of the bishops, these, on the strength of 
the peace letters of the martyrs, opened communion 
immediately with the lapsed. 4 Was this due to the 
letter of the Roman presbyters to their Carthaginian 
colleagues, 5 as Ritschl and Harnack think? No. 
The old view is not well founded that a sharp oppo- 
sition existed between the presbyters as a whole and 
their bishop. What happened was that four presby- 
ters 6 wrote to Cyprian in the first stage of the per- 
secution (between February and April, 250) to 

3 See Eps. 26 (17) and 27 (22) for Cyprian's reply. 

4 Ep. 15 (10), 1 ; 16 (9) : 2, 3 ; 17 (u), 2. 5 Ep. 8 (2). 
6 Donatus, Fortunatus, Novatus, and Gordius. 



Cyprian, the; Lapsed. 89 

move him to show mildness to the fallen, and to 
give peace anyhow to the dying. Cyprian did not 
comply. 7 Soon after came the second stage of the 
persecution when there was a possibility to help the 
fallen by the martyrs. Now a part of the presbyters 
take advantage of this, and on their own motion 
grant Church communion to the lapsed who possess 
martyr's certificates without waiting for the de- 
cision of the bishop. That is, at the daily offering 
(what we call the Lord's Supper) they receive their 
gifts, present their offerings for them, and let them 
take part in their whole celebration and in the 
Eucharistic meal. 8 

The situation becomes clearer when we look at 
Alexandria. There the martyrs gave prayer and 
table communion to the penitent lapsed, and Bishop 
Dionysius asks his Antioch colleague whether he 
will indorse this. 9 There (in Alexandria) the 
bishop had no right to decide the case himself. The 
martyr-libellus was sufficient. The bishop followed 
as a matter of course. This gives us a clear view 
of the old Church practice. There was no formal 
solemn declaration of the martyrs and of other 
pneumatics; they simply get the conviction that 



7 Ep. 14 (5), 4. 8 15 (10), 1 ; 16 (9), 2 ; and other passages. See 

Muller, p. 85, note 2. 9 Eusebius vi, 42. 



90 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

God has forgiven the penitent sinners, and so com- 
munion was naturally opened to them. 10 

Compare now the behavior of the Carthaginian 
presbyters. They disown the right of the bishop to 
decide, and took it upon themselves. Their be- 
havior is therefore a dishonor to the episcopate, and 
a despisal of his priesthood and of his chair. 11 
That is, they act as was customary at Alexandria 
at that time. But their behavior appears in a dif- 
ferent light to Cyprian, because the right of the 
bishop had developed otherwise in Carthage than 
it had in Alexandria. Callistus's exaltation of the 
bishop had struck home more deeply in Carthage. 
But the presbyters at length come around. They 
break off communion with the lapsed. 12 They con- 
fess that their decision is only for the time being, 
and that in any case the bishop had to decide. The 
opposition therefore could not have been as heavy 
as it has been represented. At the bottom they did 
not oppose Cyprian's episcopal rights as he con- 
ceived them. They only waived them at the start 
If they belonged to an older generation who had 
known other ways in the persecution of Septimius 
Severus (reigned 193-211), their conduct is quite 
natural. 



10 Sohm agrees with this. 11 Ep. 17 (n). 12 Ep. 20 (14), 2,] 



Cyprian, th£ Lapsed. 91 

Still there were presbyters whose opposition 
went deeper — especially Fortunatus and Novatus. 
For the latter, who was on the lax side at Carthage 
and the strict side in Rome, it was probably opposi- 
tion to Cyprian himself. 13 They even wrote to 
Rome to urge denial of all communion to Cyprian. 14 
Cyprian defends himself to the satisfaction, it seems 
to me, of all impartial students. 15 

Probably Novatus was the leading spirit in this 
irreconcilable opposition, who worked on the sym- 
pathies of his colleagues for former customs, — 
those "good old times/' perhaps, when the bishops 
did not loom so high. 

We come now to the lapsed. They stormed the 
confessors and martyrs, as we have seen, and re- 
ceived libelli by the thousand. But their hopes were 
all dashed to the ground when the presbyters with- 
drew the communion they had first granted. This 
created a critical situation. All the lapsed without 
exception had received letters of peace from the 
confessors, — a gross abuse of privilege. The lapsed 
cried aloud for the communion promised. In the 
provinces the pressure was so great that the bishops 
gave in, at least in part. In Carthage the clergy 

13 See Cyprian's portrayal of this old hate in Epistle 43 (39), 1. 

14 If we may so interpret what is back of Epistle 20 (14). 
16 Ep. 20(14). 



92 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

wavered. Cyprian must meet them half way. In- 
formed of the difficult position of the clergy, Cyprian 
concluded to concede something. On his own ini- 
tiative he wrote saying that in the prospect of death 
peace could be granted to those who could show 
martyr's certificates, that is, they would be received 
into full communion with the Church. 16 That was 
the standpoint that the Roman society had taken at 
the beginning of the persecution, only without hav- 
ing regard to martyr's certificates. In fact, in 
Rome the martyrs and confessors would have noth- 
ing to do with the lapsed. 

Cyprian made no further concessions, the Afri- 
can bishops assented to his principles, Rome came 
out in the same way, and most of the lapsed quieted 
themselves. 17 A part, however, remained defiant. 
The martyr Paul had given them peace ; they had it 
therefore already in heaven ; let the Church give it 
also, to which they already belonged in a true 
sense. 18 It will be seen from this that if the dis- 
satisfied lapsed attach themselves to the dissatisfied 
presbyters, we have the materials for a new Church 
in Carthage. 

And so we come to the so-called schism of Feli- 
cissimus, — a dark corner in Church history, though 



16 Ep. 18 (la). 17 32 (31), 2. 18 33 (26); 35 (28); and 36 (29), 1. 



Cyprian, ths Lapsed. 93 

Karl Miiller has thrown welcome light into it. About 
March, 251, the persecution over, Cyprian prepared 
to go back to Carthage. The confessors had not yet 
dared to assemble in full public meeting*. Only 
three presbyters are faithful from Cyprian's point 
of view; the others are either scattered or as un- 
trustworthy as a part of the society. Some of the 
lapsed are still in revolt. Cyprian sends therefore a 
commission of two bishops and one or two Cartha- 
ginian presbyters to attend to some things before 
he ventures himself. They are to distribute finan- 
cial help from the Church treasury to the needy, 
particularly to those who need help in business, 
making careful inquiry as to conditions, worthiness, 
etc. They are also to note the able and faithful in 
the Church, and those who are eligible to Church 
office. No sooner is the commission at work than 
Felicissimus steps out against them and threatens 
the brethren who applied for aid, that, if they take 
the money and obey the bishops, he would not per- 
mit them to communicate even on deathbed. A 
part then fell back, but the majority took the money. 

Why this passionate interference of Felicissi- 
mus ? And why did a part of the society hold with 
him? 

With the expected return of the bishop it was 



94 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

a fitting time for the opposition to come to a head 
Otherwise the investigations of the commission 
might overawe and their subventions win. Besides, 
as soon as Cyprian returns, he will begin a careful 
inquiry into each case of the lapsed. Will this in- 
vestigation be favorable? Will those who rushed to 
the tribunals to deny Christ shine well beside those 
who were overcome by torture? But both classes 
had already received letters of peace from the mar- 
tyrs or in their name. Look at the hardness of the 
bishop in going behind the letters to weigh each 
case ! This is the moment, therefore, to assert their 
rights, and standing on the -prerogative of the mar- 
tyrs, claim their place in the Church. 

It is probable that Felicissimus was only a 
spokesman for the five presbyters who are always 
seen at his side. And as a prominent layman — 
there is no evidence for the common idea that he 
was a deacon at this time — it may have been sup- 
posed that he would influence the lay members to 
revolt. Cyprian acted with promptness. He sent 
word to the commission to exclude Felicissimus, an- 
other layman, Augendus, and any others who held 
with them, from the Church. This they did. There- 
fore the schism. 

Hitherto it had been largely a layman's move- 



Cyprian, the Lapsed. 95 

ment. Now the five presbyters came out boldly on 
the side of Felicissimus, some of whom had com- 
municated w^ith the lapsed. They now open the 
doors of communion to this class. They lead the 
lapsed to destruction, says Cyprian. 19 They slight 
the decree of Cyprian and of the Roman clergy and 
confessors, as well as all the bishops of this and of 
the other side of the sea. They create a new sacri- 
legious tradition. They erect another altar, a new 
priesthood. So they separate themselves from the 
Church, for in it is only one altar, that of the 
bishop. The latter need not exclude them: they 
have excluded themselves before all the world. 

Did the presbyters and Felicissimus so think? 
Evidently not.. After the martyrs have granted for- 
giveness to the penitent lapsed, they really have 
peace in heaven, and no bishop is justified in for- 
bidding another to hold communion with them. 
That is, the presbyters really place themselves upon 
the old standpoint of the precatholic time when the 
charismatic ministry, the prophets and apostles, who 
spoke in the Holy Ghost, were still living forces in 
the world. Their voice was now heard, so to speak, 
in the martyrs, who had shown by their heroic tes- 
timony that they had succeeded to the spiritual 



19 Ep. 43 (39). 



96 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

power of apostles. Whatsoever they bind or loose 
on earth is bound or loosed in heaven. Cyprian's 
attempt to tie this prerogative to an official class, 
the bishops, evidently made no impression on some 
of the older generation in Carthage. It is the old 
story of the prophet against the priest. But one 
part was struggling against, the other for, the cur- 
rent of the age, and that makes all the difference in 
the world as to success or failure, though not as to 
right or wrong. 

But the new Church continued. Felicissimus 
was ordained deacon. Cyprian returned on or after 
Easter, 251, and therewith ceases his correspondence 
with the society. A great synod was held in Car- 
thage in 251 to deliberate on the question. It ex- 
communicated Felicissimus and the five presbyters, 
and as to the lapsed decided (1) that there should 
be a careful examination of each case; (2) that the 
lapsed who had not sacrificed, such, for instance, as 
the thuriflcati or those who only burned or threw 
incense to the emperor's image or at the altars of the 
gods, and such as had bought certificates from the 
officers, — that these could be restored to full mem- 
bership after penance and public application to the 
bishop; (3) that the sacriftcati should be restored 
at the hour of death, if they continued penitent; (4) 



Cyprian, the Lapsed. 97 

but that those who showed penitence only in sick- 
ness or at approaching death should be refused. 20 
This was certainly a sensible middle way, — keep- 
ing something of the former strictness, and yet con- 
ceding a good deal to the actual facts and to the 
necessities of souls. It will be noticed that the 
bishop's prerogative is fully secured, and that the 
martyr's libelli are left out in the cold. The day 
of the bishop had fully come. 

Why this strictness to those who sacrificed, how- 
ever, and tenderness to the rest of the lapsed ? Were 
they sinners above all others? It was impossible 
that a compromise like that, however, well meaning 
and on the whole just, should stand, especially in a 
time when a fresh persecution might at any moment 
bring penitent lapsed to the jaws of death. The 
Church must either go back to the second century 
conception of remissible and irremissible sins, or go 
back farther to the apostolic conception of the par- 
donableness of all sins, except such as from their 
nature reveal a heart deliberately and irrecoverably 
given to evil. 21 But the Church does not know the 
heart, and all she can act on is the presumption of 
the genuineness of the penitence. The main ques- 
tion with the Christian is not, Has he sinned? The 

20 Ep. 54 (50), and especially 55 (51). 

21 See Matt, xii, 31-2 ; Heb. x, 26-31 ; 1 John v, 16-7. 

7 



98 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

affirmative may be assumed, at least for sins of 
thought, neglect, inadvertence. The real question 
is, Is he truly penitent? The Church can not go 
back of that record, even if she has to follow her 
Master in His staggering severities. 22 We need not 
be surprised, therefore, if a year or two later a 
second synod, in view of a threatening persecution, 
gave peace to all the lapsed, who had kept them- 
selves to the Church and had faithfully done pen- 
ance. This was coming round to the position of 
the presbyters and Felicissimus, though for another 
reason and by another road. But these continued 
their independent action, had Fortunatus conse- 
crated bishop of Carthage, sent an embassy to Rome 
to win recognition there, and kept up their Church 
for some time. How long we do not know. The 
movement had no reason for existence after the ac- 
tion of the second Cyprianic council, and apparently 
died a natural death soon after that. With such a 
bishop as Cyprian to pass on questions of the lapsed, 
it was just as well that it died. 

Now as to the results. We see how Cyprian 
changed. First, he was disinclined to grant peace 
to the lapsed. Then he was willing to grant it to 
the dying who had martyr's letters. After that 



22 Matt, xviii, 22. 



Cyprian, th# Lapsed. 99 

when his first council left martyrs and confessors 
entirely out of the account, and decided that whole 
classes of lapsed should have peace during life, 
Cyprian agreed, as he did finally when the second 
council decided that all could have peace. Why 
was this? Evidently it was because each advance 
left the bishop more and more in possession of the 
field. 

Notice the development of the Church generally. 
Formerly the martyrs had the right to give com- 
munion to those whose sins they forgave, or of 
whom they said, in virtue of their possession of the 
Spirit, that God had forgiven. But that did not 
compel the society to take in the offender, it only 
enabled it to do so. Where the bishop had to de- 
cide as to the participation in the Eucharistic sacri- 
fice, no sinner could come to that offering without 
his consent. (Customs may have varied more or 
less in different cities.) But that did not mean that 
the bishop had the initiative alone, and that the 
judgment of a martyr might remain in suspense. 
The society itself or a part of it could grant com- 
munion to a fallen brother on a martyr's claim, and 
w T ith their weight press the bishop to a favorable ac- 
tion. Only the last decision remained with the 
bishop, because he presided at the offering. 



ioo Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

In all this Callistus, as far as we know, was the 
first to make a change. He left the martyrs out, 
and shoved in between them and the society the 
decision of the bishop. Their claim has no power 
till the bishop indorses it. This principle was 
adopted at once in the West, at least in Carthage. 
Still some sections in the Church held to the old 
practice, as the presbyters in Carthage, and the 
lapsed grasped so eagerly at it that they expected 
the bishop and the society without more ado to 
govern themselves according to the letters of the 
martyrs. But their fate was sealed, because the lat- 
ter never once put in an absolute claim of deciding 
their admission. That they left to the bishops and 
congregation. 

Cyprian was victor. He advances, martyrs dis- 
appear, the bishop alone is left. Finally, the bishop 
can go his own way, if necessary, even in spite of the 
will of the congregation. With that is reached the 
first step that can be called Catholic in the full sense. 
History is being made with a vengeance. No mor- 
tal sin excludes : adultery, murder, apostasy — all can 
be fixed up in the regular penitential institution of 
the Church. 

In the East, however, the old conditions re- 
mained for some time. In Alexandria, about 250, 



Cyprian, the Lapsed. ioi 

the bishop had no clearly defined right to vise the 
decision or pardon of a martyr, nor was it cus- 
tomary. As late as the Diocletian persecution 
(303 ff) the martyrs played a similar role in that 
city, as they did in Carthage in 250. But these are 
only unessential fragments of a time forever flown. 23 



23 Prof. Karl Muller, whom I have followed in this exposition. See 
oote, p. 84. 



CHAPTER IX. 
THE NOVATIAN CHURCH. 

If the Felicissimus movement in Carthage, 
growing out of the disciplinary and penitential con- 
troversy in which Cyprian had such a large share, 
came to nothing, so far as a separate Church was 
concerned, that can not be said of a movement that 
sprang from the same cause in Rome, of which the 
letters of Cyprian are our chief contemporary in- 
formation. That spread from Rome west to Spain 
and east to Syria, and continued a separate and dis- 
tinct Church life Catholic in essentials and ortho- 
dox for five centuries. This had so close a relation 
to movements in which Cyprian was a chief actor 
that a brief statement concerning it is in place. It 
is one of the most significant outgrowths of the 
Cyprianic age. 

We have already seen that in the second and 
early part of the third century it was customary to 
exclude definitely and finally from the Church those 
guilty of idolatry, adultery, and related sins, and 
murder, reserving for the penitents of this class the 

102 



The Novatian Church. 103 

mercy of God in the next world. This shows clearly 
that at that time the Church was not thought of as 
coextensive with salvation; that is, one might be 
saved and yet not be a member of the Church. This 
strict exclusion was broken up by the Roman bishop, 
Callistus (218-23), who made an exception of sins 
of impurity, though alleviations were permitted by 
the custom of honoring martyrs' intercessions and 
forgiveness. It is evident that in Cyprian's time 
absolution for gross sins of the flesh was not un- 
common. 1 One of the consequences of Callistus's 
looseness was the separate Church of Hippolytus 
in Rome. But as the Hippolytan Church had al- 
ready amalgamated with the general Church before 
250, there had probably been a sharpening of dis- 
cipline by Callistus's successors. This does not 
mean that fleshly sinners were finally excluded in 
Rome, for absolution for such sins was no longer 
a matter of controversy, there. As to idolatry — that 
was another matter. 

The Decian persecution changed the whole sit- 
uation. The number of the lapsed was so great that 
to keep up the old rule imperiled the existence of 
congregations. Even Tertullian seemed to feel that 
overstrictness in some cases here might be unjust, 



lEp. 4 (61); 55 (51), 20. 



104 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

for in torture one might deny the faith as it were 
involuntarily, while keeping it unspotted in his 
heart. 2 Besides, the doctrine of the Church de- 
manded a change. If the Church is the hierarchy, 
''outside of which there is no salvation/' then the 
old belief is deceptive that God could receive the 
penitent sinner to grace to whom the Church had 
denied absolution. There is no doubt that the 
Decian persecution greatly helped this theory. 
Would it be merciful to relegate vast masses of 
penitents to the uncovenanted mercies of God, when 
their reception again into the Church might make 
their salvation certain? Besides, it was the custom 
almost universal in 250 to give remission just be- 
fore death. Why not make assurance doubly sure ? 
Who knows when death may come ? Why keep the 
penitent in this miserable uncertainty? If the 
Church forgives, they are forgiven. "The longing 
of the lapsed after reconciliation, the insecurity as to 
salvation where Churchly absolution failed, even 
with earnest penitence, 3 shows most distinctly that 
the Church was forced by her laity to hold herself 
as the indispensable condition of salvation." 4 It 



2 De Pud. 22. 3 Eus. 6, 44. 

4 Harnack, art. on Novatianism in the Hauck-Herzog, 3. Aufl. XIV, 
223-42 (1904). Harnack has gone into this matter with characteristic Ger- 
man thoroughness, but with his own lucidity, and I follow his conclusions 
in this chapter. 



The Novatian Church. 105 

was carrying this theory out to its logical result, the 
theory that the Church, through her officers, has 
the power of the keys, that she opens or shuts the 
kingdom of heaven, and that only those to whom 
she opens go in, — it was this thoroughly Cyprianic 
theory which at the bottom caused by way of pro- 
test the great Novatian Church. 

Novatian was a presbyter of the Roman 
Church, one of the holiest and ablest of her clergy. 
He was the only theologian of the Roman Church 
for three centuries. He was learned, eloquent, and 
a thinker, and it has been left to recent research to 
restore to his name some books which Catholic 
copyists later either could not or would not assign 
to their real author — him whom they looked upon as 
a schismatic — but knew it was perfectly safe to 
father upon Cyprian. Could an arch-schismatic 
write such books as those on the "Spectacles," on 
"Modesty," on the "Praise of Martyrdom," on the 
"Jews?" Horrors! Never! Put them down to 
Cyprian! The poverty of the Roman Church in 
learning and theological power is a striking fact in 
the history of the early Church. Her uninstructed 
presbyters when they write letters to Carthage, 
printed in Cyprian, can not command decent Latin. 
Therefore during the fifteen months' vacancy in the 



106 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

chair after the martyrdom of Fabian (January 20, 
250), when the government of the Church reverted 
according to the primitive custom to the presbyters 
with the laity, their literary spokesman was Nova- 
tian. He conducted the correspondence of the so- 
ciety. "A maintainer of the Gospel and of Christ," 
Cyprian scornfully calls him — Cyprian was a dealer 
in sarcasm — after he became the leader of an inde- 
pendent Church. 5 His conduct was blameless, and 
even his enemies can charge nothing against him. 
The presbyter college in Rome, when not decimated 
by persecution, consisted of fifty-three persons, 6 
and at their head in moral weight after the death of 
Fabian stood Novatian, while of their next bishop, 
Cornelius, we hear nothing. 

We have three letters of the Roman presbyters 
in Cyprian (other letters are lost), of which two 
are by Novatian. 7 In the first it is said that it is 
the custom to give absolution to the sick penitent 
lapsed, a custom which Cyprian now follows im- 
plicitly, 8 though at first he was stricter. In Epistle 
30, written by Novatian, the practice followed by 
Cyprian is praised, and, with all strictness against 
the libellatici, the possibility of a reception again 



5 Ep. 44 (40), 3. 6 Eus. 6 : 43, 11. 7 Eps. 8 (2) in uncouth Latin, 

and 30 and 36 (29) by Novatian. 8 See Eps. 18 (12); 19 (13); 20 (14), 3. 



The Novatian Church. 107 

into the Church is not cut off. When peace is re- 
stored, the matter of the lapsed shall be treated in 
a great council. Until that time let them show a 
proper penitence. "We will pray that upon the 
penitence of the lapsed the effect of the pardon shall 
follow, and that they in knowledge of their trans- 
gression shall prove their patience in the mean- 
time." 9 This middle path, he says, we have fol- 
lowed in common with some neighboring bishops 
and those present in Rome. No new practice shall 
be introduced, not at least till a bishop is elected. 
In the other epistle, Novatian shows perfect agree- 
ment with Cyprian, and strongly supports him in 
his conflict with lax confessors and their letters of 
peace. So the letters which Cyprian sends to Roman 
confessors show harmony both in Rome itself and 
between Cyprian and Rome. 10 Up to the beginning 
of spring, 251, therefore, there was no sign of an 
independent Church in Rome. While Novatian 
was characterized by the moral earnestness and de- 
cision with which he asserted evangelical vigor and 
a robust faith, he did not differ materially from 
Cyprian and the Church of his time as to dealing 
with the lapsed. 

Like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky all this is 



9 Ep. 30, 6. 10 Jl P s. 28 (24); 31 (25); 37 (15). 



108 Cyprian: The) Churchman. 

changed. In March, 251, after the Decian perse- 
cution stopped, Cornelius, a novice who had been 
clothed with all the clerical offices one after the 
other, was elected bishop of Rome by the majority. 
But the minority, consisting among others of at 
least five presbyters and the most honored con- 
fessors, immediately elected Novatian bishop, and 
had him ordained according to the ordinary cus- 
tom by three bishops. There we have the start of 
the second independent Catholic Church in Rome. 11 
Why was this? 

It has been shown by Harnack that formally and 
on the surface the difference that caused the move- 
ment was a purely personal one. The presbyters 
and confessors simply did not like Cornelius; they 
distrusted him ; they had no respect for him. But 
they had perfect confidence in Novatian and re- 
spected him profoundly. It has been one of the 
frequent mistakes revealed by Church history, — 
the election of men to high office who do not com- 
mand the entire respect of all whose duty calls them 
to judge. 

11 The view of some old Protestant writers and some modern Baptists 
that the Novatian Church was a reaction in favor of primitive Christianity- 
is not well founded. As to moral discipline, it was stricter than the general 
Church, and its idea as to the power of the keys more spiritual; but in 
nearly all its customs and doctrines it did not differ one iota from the main 
Church. This is admitted by the eminent Baptist scholar, Prof. Albert 
Henry Newman, in his Church History, I, 207 (1900). 



The Novatian Church. 109 

But the personal objection was unconsciously 
mixed up with another partly personal, partly 
theoretical. During the persecution and after, Cor- 
nelius's behavior was not entirely above suspicion. 
Kven if the accusation that he was a libellaticus was 
unfounded, he had been in communion with bishops 
who had offered to idols, especially with Trophi- 
n:us, who had given up strict discipline. 12 Corne- 
lius, therefore, notoriously represented a lax disci- 
pline, and he was therefore unacceptable to the 
stricter members of the society. The majority 
elected him (as Harnack well says) in the interest 
of self-preservation, believing that he would govern 
mildly. It is evident also that Novatian was not 
himself the inciter to the second Church, — but w T as 
pressed into it. "If thou against thy will/' says 
Dionysius of Alexandria in his letter to him, "as 
thou sayest, have been carried along, then prove it 
by coming freely back again.'" 13 More easily said 
than done. The matter went deeper than Dionysius 
thought. Over against the threatening loose rule 
under the slippery Cornelius, Novatian decided to 
emphasize again the old penitential discipline, and 
to admit exceptions no more. Starting with per- 
sonal dislike, the thing went forward to material 



12 Ep. 55 (51), 10. 13 Eus. 6, 45. 



no Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

differences. It was an eternal lesson to the Church 
to elect men as pastors and bishops upon whom all 
can unite in respect and love. "If one considers/' 
says Harnack, "how for a long time in the East and 
West the lax and strict practice existed peacefully 
together (even after the Novatian Church) without 
any schism until far on into the fourth century and 
even longer, if we remember that at the beginning 
Cyprian always blames the fact of the schism not 
the theory of the schismatics, one can not doubt 
that the differences would have been borne with 
farther by both sides if they had not been poisoned 
in one and the same congregation by irreconcilable 
opposition between personalities." 14 On the other 
hand, as Harnack admits, the range which the No- 
vatian movement took and its long duration show 
that the fundamental differences in principle were 
after all the chief ones. 

Now what attitude did Cyprian take to this 
movement? If it is evident that the lofty character 
and theological attainments of Novatian and the 
naturally rather strict views of the Carthaginian 
would have won him completely to Novatian's side 
if it had not been for two things. The first was the 
situation in Carthage itself. On account of the 



14 In Hauck-Herzog, 3. Aufl. XIV, 233. 



The Novatian Church. hi 

open schism of Felicissimus, Cyprian had been com- 
pelled to yield so far as to grant the taking in again 
of the lapsed. 15 He was veering more and more to 
moderate views on this. Second, his Church views 
made recognition of Novatian impossible. The 
Church is clergy and laity gathered around one law- 
fully elected bishop. There could be no more two 
bishops in one city, in one local Church, than there 
could be two heads on one man. To hold to one 
bishop is the essence of Christianity. Since Corne- 
lius was lawfully elected, he is the God-appointed 
head of the Roman Church, and not to gather with 
him is to gather with the adversary, Satan. That 
there could be two independent Churches in Rome, 
one in love and loyalty to Christ, one in faith, hope, 
and charity, but with different discipline, different 
government, different heads independent of each 
other but not independent of the Church and of 
Christ, — that is a thought that never entered 
Cyprian's head, or, if it did, to be repudiated in- 
stantly. He was too much a child of the third cen- 
tury for that. But it is evident that the strictly 
Catholic evolution had not gone so far that it had 
carried every one to his position. If it had, the 
greatest spirit in the Roman Church in the third 



16Ep. 43(39), esp. g§2, 6. 



ii2 Cyprian: The Churchman. 

century would not have allowed himself to be 
elected as a bishop of the Roman Church, nor would 
presbyters, confessors, and laymen have united in 
electing him. For the previous legal election of 
Cornelius was incontestable. 

But the majority were with him who had the 
seat. At a great Roman synod where there were 
sixty bishops and many presbyters and deacons, 16 
Novatian was excommunicated, and penance only 
(not lifelong exclusion) proclaimed for all the 
fallen. Novatian tried by letters and embassies to 
win recognition from brother bishops. Nor was he 
altogether unsuccessful. Fabius of Antioch favored 
him, and numerous synods at least did not disown 
him. Not so Cyprian. He wrote to the Roman 
confessors trying to call them off from the schism, 
so called, which as usual he covered with opprobrious 
epithets. 17 I might have added to the two reasons 
which led Cyprian to oppose Novatian a third, viz., 
that his enemy in Carthage, the presbyter Novatus, 
who had been one of the chief supporters of Felicis- 
simus, went to Rome and instead of favoring the 
lax side of Cornelius, as he naturally would if his 
principle had not been, Anything to beat Cyprian, he 
went over to the camp of Novatian, and did what 



16 Eus., 6, 43- 17 EP- 46 (43). 



The; Novatian Church. 113 

he could to help him and hurt Cornelius and 
Cyprian. Is it any wonder that Cyprian stood by 
Cornelius ? 

Novatus makes the Carthaginian furious. He 
attacks him with all his accustomed venom, perhaps 
more. Novatus is "always greedy of novelty, rag- 
ing with insatiable avarice, inflated with arrogance 
and stupidity of swelling pride ; always known with 
bad repute to the bishops; always condemned by 
the voice of all the priests as a heretic and perfid- 
ious ; always inquisitive that he may betray ; flatters 
that he may deceive; never faithful that he may 
love; a torch and a fire to blow up the flames of 
sedition, a whirlwind and tempest to make ship- 
wrecks of the faith; the foe of quiet," etc. "Or- 
phans despoiled by him, widows defrauded, moneys 
of the Church withheld ; his father died of hunger 
in the street, and left unburied. The womb of his 
wife was smitten by a blow of his heel, and in the 
miscarriage that followed the offspring was brought 
forth, the fruit of the father's murder/' 18 That's 
Cyprian. I wonder how much of this was personal 
hatred of an opponent, the exaggerated rhetoric of 
the advocate, and how much the actual description 
of a scoundrel priest. In the first case it is a bad 



18 Ep. 52 (48), 2. 

8 



ii4 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

reflection on Cyprian; in the second, it is a worse 
reflection on the Church. But it is inconceivable 
how a man of Novatus's reputation, as Cyprian 
described it, could exert the influence he did in 
Rome, according to Cyprian's account, who makes 
him the chief cause of the Novatian movement. 19 
Anyhow, as Harnack says, the solidarity between 
Cornelius and Cyprian received its strongest seal 
in the common opposition against Novatus. 

Cyprian now tried to win the Roman confessors 
from the side of Novatian. He succeeded. Corne- 
lius wrote to him that the glorious confessors, Max- 
imus and his companions, had forsaken Novatian 
and returned to the Church, and that they had said 
that they had been deceived by the malice, cunning, 
lies, perjury, and wolf like friendship of the de- 
ceiving and crafty beast, the schismatic and heret- 
ical Novatian. 20 But when the confessors them- 
selves came to tell to Cyprian the story of their 
leaving Novatian they practically make Cornelius 
a liar, as they allege no faults in Novatian, but sim- 
ply their concern for the welfare of the Church. 
They say: "We are certain, dearest brother, that 
you also rejoice together with us with equal ear- 



19 The Liberian Catalogue does the same. It says : "At that time 
Novatus came over from Africa, and separated Novatian and certain per- 
sons from the Church." 20 Ep. 49 (45). 



The Novatian Church. 115 

nestness that we having taken advice, and espe- 
cially considering the interests of peace of the 
Church, having passed by all other matters, and 
reserved them to God's judgment, have made peace 
with Cornelius, our brother, as well as with the 
whole clergy." 21 Here they hinted at heavy ob- 
jections to Cornelius, but they have been persuaded 
for the sake of unity to waive them, leave them to 
a Higher Judgment. In order to confirm them, 
Cyprian writes and sends them k copy of his great 
book on the "Unity of the Church," on which a 
word later. 

Novatian did not give up his cause, but sought 
all the more to push on the institution of new 
bishops. 22 A second embassy of Novatian agita- 
tors went to Carthage, among them Novatus him- 
self, while Cornelius immediately sent his own peo- 
ple for counter effect, and characterized the others 
as transgressors and knaves. The Novatian em- 
bassy succeeded in gathering a society in Carthage, 
over which Maximus (not to be confounded with 
the confessor) was made bishop. There were now 
three independent Churches and bishops in Car- 
thage — Cyprian, Fortunatus (Felicissimus), and 
Maximus, representing the moderate, the lax, and 



21 Ep. 53 (49). 22 55 (Si), 24. 



n6 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

the strict theories of discipline, but all being alike 
* Catholic in doctrine and polity. But Cyprian, in 
spite of all his passionateness against the "lax," 23 
had to make more concessions, which, of course, 
sharpened the opposition of the Novatian Church. 
These concessions were the forebodings of the ac- 
tion of the Carthaginian council of May, 253, when 
under the threatening clouds of the new persecution, 
that of Gallus, it was decided that all the penitent 
lapsed should be immediately received. 24 A sensible 
decision, say we of to-day, but what a fall from the 
olden times. One of the reasons for this decision 
was alleged to be visions and revelations, 25 to which 
Cyprian, no doubt with absolute honesty and per- 
haps truth, laid claim, and which reminds me of 
the "private wire" of my late lamented colleague, 
Professor Samuel F. Upham, who used to say in his 
inimitably droll way, "Brethren, beware of the man 
who has a private wire to heaven." The council, 
however, did not renounce the communion with 
bishops who still kept up the old practice, only 
threatening them with the judgment of God for their 
strictness. They evidently did not want to make it 
necessary (says Harnack) for any one to go over 
to the Novatian camp. 



J Ep. 59 (54), 12. 24 57 (53). 25 Ibid. II 2, 5. 



The; Novatian Church. 117 

The persecution of Gallus was not really as se- 
vere as was feared. Nevertheless it gave oppor- 
tunity for many of the lapsed in the Decian to wit- 
ness a courageous confession, and thus show the 
genuineness of their penitence and standing as 
Christians. By the banishment of Cornelius it en- 
abled his friends to celebrate him as a confessor, 
and they now said that God himself had legitimated 
him over against Novatian. The latter henceforth 
drops out of the Cyprianic letters. Many bishops 
kept up the strict practice without joining Novatian. 
At the great council of Antioch, though Novatian 
was acknowledged as bishop, the loose practice won 
the day. While some Churches came back to the so- 
called Catholic Church, the Novatian movement 
spread over Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, even 
as far as Mesopotamia, and at the beginning had 
great success. 26 

At the bottom what was the difference between 
the parties? What did the Novatian Church stand 
for? While at the start Novatian did not differ 
materially from Cyprian, he came back under the 
stress of the lax drift and from aversion to the per- 
son and views of Cornelius to the older view which 
limited the power of the keys to remissible sins. He 

26Eus. 7, 5; Ep. 55 (51), 24. 



n8 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

went on to explain Matt, x, 32-33 as the kernel 
of the Gospel, therefore to deny absolution in any 
case to one who had lapsed into heathenism ; while 
the most conservative of the other party allowed 
absolution to the penitent in view of death, to be fol- 
lowed soon by a much more general application of 
the mercy of the Church. Understand that Nova- 
tian did not deny eternal salvation to the lapsed on 
the strength of Matt, x, 33, nor deny the efficacy of 
penitence, but said only that the Scriptures left the 
decision to God, and the Church had no right to 
anticipate this judgment and grant absolution in 
cases reserved to Himself. Harnack makes the 
whole question come to this : What is the Church 
and what are her powers? If she is the indispensa- 
ble institute of salvation to the extent that out of 
her no one can be saved (Cyprian), then it is fear- 
ful cruelty to deny to any penitent admission some 
time before death. Cyprian's doctrine of the Church 
must inevitably lead to generous dealings with all 
sinners, and we see in the so-called Catholic 
Churches to-day (Roman, Anglican, Greek, Rus- 
sian, Armenian, etc.) . Cyprian did not say, of course, 
that all in the Church would be saved, only that 
none outside of her would be. On the other hand, 
if the Church is the institute of salvation in the 



The Novatian Church. 119 

sense that she has the Gospel, the means of grace, 
etc., but that salvation is not absolutely bound up 
with her, that God still works outside of her, then 
leaving apostates outside, while giving them prayers, 
sympathy, exhortation, etc., is not cruelty, because 
they can still be saved. And the Church will not for 
these sinners go beyond the Word. 

Besides, the Cyprianic and soon the general 
Church theory means, as I have just hinted, a lib- 
eral interpretation of the parable of the wheat and 
the tares. The Church is not the society of the 
saints, of the elect, but she is the ground on which 
they grow. Her religious character is represented, 
not by the character of her members, but by her 
possession of the keys, of sacramental absolution, 
of ordination, of exclusive grace. These are in- 
dispensable to salvation, but they do not guarantee 
salvation. But she instructs for salvation, and 
stimulates to virtue, and only in her has virtue any 
worth from God. 27 All this meant further exter- 
nalizing, for we have to tell the inquirer where the 
Church is. This led to the priesthood, especially 
to the episcopate, which in its unity guarantees the 
legitimacy of the Church. So every schism becomes 
in effect a heresy, — an advance beyond Irenseus and 



27 Ep. 54 (50); 57 (53)» 4. 



120 Cyprian: Th$ Churchman. 

Tertullian. On the other hand, Novatian said, the 
Church must exclude great sinners ; she can not ab- 
solve idolators, but must refer their case to God, 
who alone has the power to forgive such sins. 28 "It 
is not necessary," he said, "to have peace from the 
bishops in order to share in the glory of the martyrs. 
— greater peace is to be received through the au- 
thority of the Lord." 20 He believed also that mortal 
sin in any member of the society stains in a sense 
the whole Church. 30 The Church's formal forgive- 
ness is not necessary to salvation; God reserves 
some authority to Himself. The chief matter is 
union with Christ. The Church must be really 
what she is ostensibly, — a Church of saints. 

To an evangelical Christian the Novatian move- 
ment must look as a well-meant but belated and vain 
effort to "save the face" of primitive Christianity 
in an ill-timed emphasis on second-century features 
of pentitential discipline by those who knew apos- 
tolic Christianity almost as little as their opponents. 
Both were Catholic, not evangelical. If the Church 
must be Catholic, perhaps the bishops were as wise 
as Novatian. The greatest transformation Chris- 
tianity ever underwent — that from the Gospel of 
faith and love of the first century to the hierarchical 



2S Soc. 4, 28. 29 Ep. 57 (53), 4. 30 55 (51), 27. 



The Novatian Church. 121 

and sacramental Catholicism of the second and 
third — that transformation the bishops carried 
through, Harnack thinks, with moderation and dis- 
cretion. And if that transformation was an his- 
torical necessity, back current eddies like Nova- 
tian's, the Donatist, etc., were as futile as they were 
illogical. Still they are interesting as reminders of 
another and truer age. 



CHAPTER X. 
MERCY AND HELP. 

The) glory of ancient Christianity was as much 
its love as its faith. The love was the fruit of the 
faith and showed its genuineness and its power. 
This was the talisman which opened the hearts of 
many pagans: Behold how these Christians love 
one another. An instance or two of this in Cyp- 
rian's life shows that great bishop and Christian in 
his most attractive light. 

The barbaric tribes who were driven back from 
the fertile coast line of Africa by the Romans were 
never entirely subdued, but ever and anon made 
raids on the peaceful settlements, — prophecy of the 
coming time when Vandal and Saracen would sweep 
away African Christianity and the civilization which 
went with it. "In the year 252 there was a concen- 
trated general advance. Mauretania felt them. 
They broke out of Aures through the grand chain 
of fortress settlements, harassing the domains of the 
strongest towns, Thubunae in the salt marsh, and 

122 



Mercy and Help. 123 

the vast soldier colony of Lambsesis. From the 
Sahara they came right through the province itself 
into the terebinth woods of Tucca and to the great 
center of traffic, Assuras, little more than a hundred 
miles from Carthage. The Christian population of 
at least eight sees was thus lacerated." 1 It was 
principally the women and children whom the Ber- 
bers thus kidnaped. 

These Berber raids seem in real cruelty to have 
been child's play beside the Turkish massacres 
of Bulgarians in 1876 and of Armenians in 1895, 
but they were sufficiently devastating. As to kid- 
naping, that is an old practice which seems in- 
digenous to those Eastern lands, of which our own 
generation has had reminders in the cases of the 
accomplished and devoted Miss Stone, kidnaped 
by revolutionists restive under Turkish misrule in 
1 90 1, and the American Perdicaris, kidnaped by a 
Mohammedan insurrectionary chief in this same 
Mauretania in 1904, when we had Roosevelt's 
famous message, "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead !" 

The redeeming of captives was not specifically 
a Christian virtue. Cicero praises it as especially 
becoming senators : "That benignity is useful to 



1 Benson, 236-7. Benson is wonderfully careful and accurate in all 
geographical, antiquarian, and legal information. 



124 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

the State by which captives are redeemed from slav- 
ery, and the poor are enriched. That it was the 
common custom with our order we see copiously 
described in the speech of Crassus. This kind of 
bounty I prefer far before the munificent exhibition 
of shows. That is the part of grave men and of 
great, this of flatterers of the populace/' 2 But it is 
doubtful how much pure benevolence in the Chris- 
tian sense there was in this, or whether it was not 
something like the modern practice of exchanging 
prisoners of war. At any rate in rescuing the Ber- 
ber captives everybody contributed, rich and poor — 
the spontaneous pouring out of affection for those 
in distress. In the Church of Carthage about one 
hundred thousand sesterces (about $4,000) were 
contributed, — an enormous sum for a Church just 
decimated by persecution, which always meant con- 
fiscation of property, as well as the imprisonment, 
banishment, or death of bread-winners. It shows, 
however, the tremendous hold Christianity had got- 
ten on all classes of society — not less among the 
rich — in the third century. 

An interesting letter is that which Cyprian sends 
with the contribution. 3 The cold lawyer of heathen- 



2 De Officiis, 2, 18. The liberal " redeem those captured by robbers/' 
etc. (2, 16). 3 Ep. 62 (59). 



Mercy and Help. 125 

ism, whose old sternness had not left him, however, 
in dealing with men of his own faith who had left 
his kind of unity, has been transformed by the beau- 
tiful spirit of Christian piety. "With excessive 
grief and with tears, dearest brethren, I have read 
your letter, which, from the solicitude of your love, 
you wrote to me concerning the captivity of your 
brethren and sisters." He then quotes the fine 
passages of Paul, 1 Cor. xii, 26, 2 Cor. xi, 29, and 
says : "The captivity of our brethren must be reck- 
oned our captivity, and the grief of those in danger 
our grief, since indeed there is one body of our 
union; and not love only, but religion ought to in- 
stigate and strengthen us to redeem the members of 
the brethren." He then refers to the possible fate 
of women and girls, and adds: "Our brotherhood 
considering all these things according to your let- 
ter, and sorrowfully examining, have all promptly 
and willingly and liberally gathered together sup- 
plies of money for the brethren, being indeed always 
according to the strength of their faith prone to 
the work of God, but now once more stimulated to 
salutary works by consideration of so great a suffer- 
ing, we have then sent you a sum of one hundred 
thousand sesterces, which have been collected here 
in the Church over which, by the Lord's mercy, we 



126 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

preside, by the contributions of the clergy and peo- 
ple established with us, which you will there dis- 
pense with what diligence you may." He deprecates 
the coming of such a calamity again, but says that 
if it should come the Church in Carthage "will will- 
ingly and liberally render help." He encloses sep- 
arately the names of contributors, especially "of my 
colleagues and fellow-priests," and asks the Numid- 
ian Church to remember them in prayer. 

Perhaps a severer test was the terrible plague 
which visited Africa in 252. It was a kind of malig- 
nant typhoid fever, complicated with other horrible 
symptoms or diseases. Nothing tests fidelity to al- 
truistic ideals better than a fearful visitation like 
this. Modern Christendom hardly knows what this 
means, though India and Ireland have known 
famine; and occasionally tropical diseases, the off- 
spring of insanitary living and effluvia of the ac- 
cumulated filth of ages, have struck civilized lands, 
(e. g., yellow fever, New Orleans, 1878, 1905.) 
The last time a great plague spread from the east 
and south as far north as England was in 1663-5, 
though portions of Europe were devastated more 
than once in the eighteenth century, and parts of 
the East frequently in the nineteenth. The fatality 
of these epidemics is something awful, the Black 



Mercy and Help. 127 

Death of 1348-50 carrying away, it is said, a quar- 
ter of the population of Europe. We need not be 
surprised, then, at the agony and mortal terror of 
pagan populations when such a specter stepped into 
their midst. Those that could fled to uninfected 
places or anywhere to escape the dread disease. 
They left their sick behind, or thrust them out of 
their houses to die in the streets, and left their dead 
bodies unburied. 

" Before mine eyes in opposition sits 
Grim death, my son and foe." 

What a commentary on that generous and beautiful 
paganism some of our moderns praise! 

For twenty years this plague went to and fro 
through Mediterranean lands. It came back to 
Alexandria in 261 and in four years it had reduced 
the population one-half. It was the ally of the Per- 
sian in his war with the Roman Emperor Valerian, 
for it slew more Romans than his sword. In 262 
five thousand died in Rome, and — if the historian 
Trebellius Pollio is considered correct — the same 
number in Achaia in a single day ! Is it any won- 
der that to contemporaries it seemed the darkest 
misery that every visited mankind? 

The heathen struck coins and raised altars to 



128 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

"Healthful Apollo" (Apollo Salutaris). But their 
effective remedy has just been mentioned, — flights, 
desertions, barred gates, assassinations, drugged 
possets, seizures of fortunes of the sick and dying. 
Let the simple story of Cyprian's Deacon Pon- 
tius tell how both sides met the "hateful disease" 
which invaded every house in succession of the 
trembling populace, carrying off, day by day, with 
sudden attack, numberless people, every one from 
his own house. All were shuddering, fleeing, shun- 
ning the contagion, impiously exposing their own 
friends, as if with the shutting out of the person 
who was sure to die of the plague, one could shut 
out death itself. Meanwhile over the whole city 
there lay the carcasses of many, and by contempla- 
tion of a lot which in their turn would be theirs, de- 
manded the pity of the passers-by for themselves. 
No one regarded anything but his cruel gains. No 
one trembled at the remembrance of a similar event. 
No one did to another what he wished for himself. 
In these circumstances it would be wrong to pass 
over what the pontiff of Christ (Cyprian) did, who 
excelled the pontiffs of the world in the love, as he 
did in the truth, of religion. As the people as- 
sembled together in one place he urged the benefits 
of mercy, teaching by example the same lessons how 



M£RCY AND HEXP. 129 

greatly the duties of benevolence avail to deserve 
well of God. Then he said that there was nothing 
wonderful in our cherishing our own people only 
with the needed attentions of love, but that he might 
become perfect who would do something more than 
the publicans and the heathen. He must overcome 
evil with good, practice a clemency like the divine 
clemency, love even his enemies, pray for his per- 
secutors, as the Lord exhorts. God continually 
makes his sun to shine and sends showers upon 
aliens as well as His own. And if a man professes 
to be a son of God, why does he not imitate the 
example of his Father? It becomes us, he said, to 
answer to our birth (respondere natalibus), and it 
is not fitting that those who are evidently born of 
God should be degenerate, but rather that the propa- 
gation of a good Father should be proved in His 
offspring by the emulation of His goodness." 4 

The congregation responded nobly. They raised 
an abundant fund, formed a staff for nursing the 
sick, another for the burial of the dead, and covered 
the stricken city with a network of relief. What 
impression did this make upon the heathen? Ap- 
parently not very much. They were enraged be- 
cause the Christians did not join in their offerings 



4 Vita Cyp. 9. 

9 



130 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

to Health, to Apollo, and to Ccelestis, Queen of 
Heaven (compare the offerings of Roman Catholics 
to Mary, Queen of Heaven, under similar and other 
circumstances). The populace clamored for the 
blood of the overseer, Cyprian, who was prompting 
the noblest relief for them. "To the lions," they 
called out in circus and amphitheater, and had him 
officially proscribed : 5 pagan to Cyprian, Jew to his 
Master after the raising of Lazarus. 6 Pontius 
speaks of his later banishment as a pagan recom- 
pense for benevolent civic activity, for his "with- 
drawing from living sight a horror like that of 
hell, for saving his country from becoming the 
empty shell of an exiled population." 7 

Cyprian's book, "Of Works and Alms," may be 
considered an echo of this great self-sacrifice of 
the Carthaginian Church. It is his philosophy of 
good deeds, his doctrine of merit. Is he here Cath- 
olic or Protestant? I think he does not belie his 
age nor himself. "God can be appeased by alms- 
giving alone." 8 "By works of righteousness God is 
satisfied, and with the deserts of mercy sins are 
cleansed." 9 He quotes the angel Raphael : "Prayer 
is good, and fasting, and alms; because alms also 



5 Ep. 54 (59), 6. 6 John xi, 53. 7 Vita Cyp. IX. 

8 De Opere et Eleemosynis, 4. 9 Ibid. 5. 



M^RCY AND HEXP. 131 

doth deliver from death, and it purgeth away sins." 10 
Prayer alone is of little avail unless it be made suffi- 
cient by good works. He takes Christ's words in 
Matt, xix, 21, as the law of the Gospel, and not sim- 
ply the instruction which at that time the wise 
Teacher saw was best for the case before him. God 
"distributes to our merits and good works the prom- 
ised rewards." "The Lord will never fail of giving 
a reward for our merits." 11 

On the other hand, the treatise "Of Works and 
Alms," is a noble plea for beneficence and good 
deeds. He strikes home upon those who by the 
"coveteousness of money do nothing for the fruit 
of their salvation," and he hopes that the "blush of 
dishonor and disgrace may strike upon their sordid 
consciences." He boldly represents Satan twit- 
ting Christ with the devotion of his (Satan's) fol- 
lowers, the rich gifts they give to Him, and the 
meanness of Christ's people. "Show, O Christ, such 
givers as these of Thine — those rich men, those 
men affluent with abounding wealth — whether in 
the Church wherein Thou presidest and beholdest 
they set forth a gift of that kind, having pledged 
or scattered their riches, yea having transferred 
them then by the change of their possessions for 



10 Tob. xii, 8, 9. 11 De Op. et El. 26. 



132 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

the better, into heavenly treasures ! In those spec- 
tacles of mine, perishing and earthly as they are, no 
one is fed, no one is clothed, no one is sustained by 
the comfort of any meat or drink. All things be- 
tween the madness of the exhibitor and the mistake 
of the spectator are perishing in a prodigal and fool- 
ish vanity of deceiving pleasures. There in thy poor 
thou art clothed and fed. Thou providest eternal 
life for those who labor for Thee, and scarcely are 
Thy people made equal to mine that perish, although 
they are honored by Thee with divine wages and 
heavenly rewards." 12 How beautiful his praise of 
charity : "An illustrious and divine thing is the sav- 
ing labor of charity ; a great comfort to believers, a 
wholesome guard of our security, a protection of 
hope, a safeguard of faith, a remedy for sin, a thing 
placed in the power of the doer, a thing both great 
and easy, a crown of peace without the risk of per- 
secution ; the true and greatest gift of God, needful 
for the weak, glorious for the strong, assisted by 
which the Christian accomplishes spiritual grace, 
deserves well of Christ the Judge, accounts God 
his debtor. For the palm of work of salvation let 
us gladly and readily strive, let us all in the struggle 
of righteousness run with God and Christ looking 

12 De Op. et El. 22. 



Mercy and Hexp. 133 

on. And let us who have already begun to be 
greater than this life and the world slacken our 
course by no desire of this life and of this world. 
If the day shall find us, whether it be the day of 
reward or of oppression, furnished, if swift, if run- 
ning in this contest of charity, the Lord will never 
fail of giving a reward for our merits : in peace He 
will give to us who conquer a white crown for labor, 
in persecution a purple one for death." 13 We have 
here the words of a holy and devoted shepherd of 
souls, though of one steeped in Catholic ideas. 

The sufferings which come to Christians and 
heathen brought up the two questions : ( 1 ) Why do 
calamities come to the world? and (2) Why do 
Christians suffer? It will be interesting to notice 
how these puzzling everlasting questions are an- 
swered by Cyprian. 

In one of his most interesting books he takes up 
the first question. It seems that Demetrianus, pro- 
consul of Africa, had charged upon the Christians 
that they were the cause of all the terrible plagues, 
etc., which were now falling upon the empire. This 
opinion of his lent zest to his persecuting measures. 
Cyprian meets it in this book "Ad Demetrianum ,, in 
two ways. First, he says that such things must be 

13 De Op. et El. 26. 



134 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

expected in the old age of the world, when the 
forces of nature are drying up and all things hasten- 
ing to a common ruin. 14 How foolish to impute 
to Christians what is due to nature. "No one 
should wonder that everything begins to fail in the 
world when the whole world itself is in process of 
failing, and in its end." Second, so far from calam- 
ities being punishments for Christians' impiety, they 
are direct punishments for heathen idolatry. All 
these natural evils — pestilence, disease, failure of 
crops, famine, etc. — are "in consequence of the sins 
which provoke them." They are all stripes of the 
Lord. The treatise is a terrific arraignment of the 
evils of the time, and a proof that Cyprian's hiding 
from persecution was not due to cowardice, for no 
coward could write in this strain. "You complain 
that the enemy rises up, as if, even though external 
arms and dangers from barbarians were repressed, 
the weapons of destructive assault, the calamities 
and wrongs of powerful citizens, would not be more 
ferocious and more harshly wielded within. You 
complain of barrenness and famine, as if drought 
made a greater famine than rapacity, as if the fierce- 
ness of want did not increase more terribly from 
grasping at the increase of the year's produce and 



14 This striking passage is inserted in the Hurst Ch. Hist. I, 198-9. 



M^RCY AND HEXP. I35 

the accumulation of their price. You complain that 
the heaven is shut up from showers, although in 
the same way the barns are shut up on earth. You 
complain that now less is produced, as if what al- 
ready had been produced is given to the indigent. 
You reproach plague and disease, while by plague 
itself or disease the crimes of individuals are either 
detected or increased, while mercy is not manifested 
to the weak, and avarice and rapine are waiting 
open-mouthed for the dead. The same men are 
timid in the duties of affection, but rash in quest of 
impious gains, shunning the deaths of the dying, and 
craving the spoils of the dead; forsaking sick 
wretches lest they by being cured may escape the 
hand clutching for their estate." 15 

Cyprian denounces the heathen method of deal- 
ing with Christians, tearing their bodies, lacerating 
their vitals, or devising new tortures. 16 Besides in 
this case tortures, which are used to extort con- 
fessions of crime, are not necessary ; because Chris- 
tians readily confess their Christianity. Publicly, 
openly, in the hearing of your magistrates and gov- 
ernors I freely confess that I am a Christian ; why 
then do you apply tortures to one who thus openly 
destroys your gods ? 17 But as to the main question, 



15 Ad. Demet. 10. 16 Ibid. 12. 17 Ibid. 13. 



136 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

Why are these evils permitted? they are the direct 
judgments of the Almighty. 

As to the second question, Why do Christians 
suffer? Cyprian came to that in his beautiful treatise 
"On Mortality," written to comfort the Christians 
in the plague. The first reason is the common 
humanity which Christians have with others. All 
the ordinary disabilities of the flesh, all ordinary 
disasters, must necessarily be common to all who 
wear the common body. 18 The second reason is the 
fact that Christians are attacked by the devil more 
than others. 19 Besides, they must be tried as sol- 
diers, that their courage and constancy may appear. 
Their trials perfect faith, strengthen virtue. 20 After 
describing the horrible symptoms of the plague he 
says: "What grandeur of spirit it is to struggle 
with all the powers of an unshaken mind against so 
many onsets of devastation and death ! What sub- 
limity to stand erect amid the desolations of the 
human race and not to lie prostrate with those who 
have no faith in God! But rather to rejoice, by 
suffering and showing forth our faith going for- 
ward to Christ by the narrow way that Christ trod, 
we may receive the reward of his life and faith ac- 
cording to His own judgment." 21 As consolation 

18 De Mort. 8. 19 Ibid. 9. 20 Ibid. 13. 21 Ibid. 14. 



M^RCY AND H£I,P. 137 

Cyprian looks away to the other life — it is Paul's, 
The sufferings of this present time are not worthy 
to be compared with the glory that shall be re- 
vealed. 22 But there are compensations here: the 
plague snatches virgins away from the danger of 
brothels, boys from the perils of their unstable age, 
and matrons from the torments of the executioner. 
Besides by all these things the "lukewarm are in- 
flamed, the slack are nerved up, slothful stimulated, 
deserters compelled to return, heathens constrained 
to believe, the ancient congregation of the faithful 
called to rest, the new and abundant congregation 
of the faithful gathered to battle with a braver vigor 
to fight without fear of death when the battle shall 
come." 23 

In addition Cyprian sees in the plague a kind 
of probation, a testing. This proves its pertinence 
and necessity. It searches the righteousness of each 
one; it proves whether the healthy tend the sick, 
whether relatives love their kindred, masters pity 
servants, physicians forsake patients, the fierce sup- 
press their violence, rapacious their avarice, the 
haughty bend their neck, wicked soften their bold- 
ness, the rich give. It trains Christians for martyr- 
dom by teaching them not to fear death. "These are 



22 Rom. viii, 18. 23 De Mort. 15. 



138 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

trainings for us, not deaths. They give the mind 
the glory of fortitude; by contempt of death they 
prepare for the crown." 24 

The best part of the treatise is devoted to a 
beautiful exhortation to fidelity on account of the 
heavenly rewards that await the faithful. Here 
Cyprian appears at his best. Why should we bewail 
those who are "not lost but gone before ?'" 25 Why 
should we wear black here for those who wear 
white there ? Will we lay ourselves open to the re- 
proach of the heathen that the heart does not in- 
dorse the testimony of the mouth? 26 Death is the 
entrance to life. Therefore let us hail the day that 
calls us home. There our dear ones are waiting for 
us — parents, brothers, children, all longing for us 
and solicitous for our salvation. To attain their 
presence and embrace — what a gladness for them 
and us. There death can not enter. Then think of the 
company ; the glorious company of the apostles, the 
host of rejoicing prophets, innumerable multitudes 
of martyrs, 27 the triumphant virgins, the men of 
mercy who won the reward of kindness to the poor. 
To these let us hasten with eager desire ; let us crave 



24 De Mort. 16. 25 Sciamus non eos amitti sed praemitti. 26 Ibid. 20. 
27 Apostolorum gloriosus chorus ; 
Prophetarum exulantium numurus; 
Martyrum innumerabilis populus. 



MSRCY AND HlXP. I39 

to be quickly with them and come quickly to Christ ! 
May God behold our eager desire; may the Lord 
Christ look upon this purpose of our mind and 
faith ! He will give the larger rewards of his glory 
to those whose desires in respect of Himself were 
greater. 28 



28 De Mort. 26. 



CHAPTER XI. 
THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

That the Lord's Prayer was intended as a model 
and help rather than a form to be strictly followed, 
is apparent from the fact that Christianity is a re- 
ligion of the spirit, and from the additional fact 
that in New Testament times it is never once re- 
ferred to, and in the post-apostolic writings only 
in the so-called Teaching of the Apostles (viii, 2). 
Tertullian is the first to treat it (about the close of 
the second century). In the third or fourth cen- 
tury it entered into the liturgy of the Church, and 
ever since that has been used by liturgical and 
many non-liturgical Churches, — by some in the 
heathen way rebuked by Christ. 1 It speaks highly 
for Cyprian that in the midst of the anguish of the 
plague and the care of the Church he could find 
heart and time to write a treatise on the Lord's 
Prayer. 

Cyprian has a good idea of prayer. After com- 

1 Matt, vi, 7. 

I40 



The Lord's Prayer. 141 

mending secret prayer, he says that when we come 
together in one place to "celebrate divine sacrifices 
with God's priest," we must observe modesty and 
discipline, not throw abroad our prayers indiscrim- 
inately, with loud voices, "nor cast to God with 
tumultuous wordiness a petition that ought to be 
commended to God by modesty, for God is the 
hearer not of the voice, but of the heart," — a caution 
that reminds one of the anxious question of a little 
boy in Pittston, Pa., on hearing the boisterous plead- 
ing of some preacher, "Mother, is his God deaf?" 
God need not be clamorously reminded, says Cyp- 
rian, since he sees men's thoughts. 2 

The text of the prayer Cyprian used ran : "Our 
Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. 
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven 
so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And 
forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. 
And suffer us not to be led into temptation, but de- 
liver us from evil (or the evil one). Amen." 

The first point made is the unselfishness of the 
prayer. It is not my Father, it is not, my daily 
bread, but our Father, our daily bread, our debts, 
lead us not, etc. But Cyprian's mind is not so much 
en the unselfishness of the prayer as on its teaching 



2 De Dom. Orat. 4. 



142 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

of unity. "Our prayer is public and common ; when 
we pray, we pray not for one, but for the whole 
people, because we, the whole people, are one." 3 
Unity is taught everywhere. That is all important. 

As to "Father," Cyprian does not see at all any 
hint of Christ's teaching as to the universal Father- 
hood of God. It is only those who believe in Christ, 
and who in baptism have put Him on, who are God's 
sons. A sinful people can not be a son, but only 
those who have received remission of sins and to 
whom immortality is promised. 4 

"Hallowed be Thy name" means that His name 
may be hallowed in us by our continual sanctifica- 
tion. This was begun in baptism, which washed us 
from our sins, but the cleansing must be continued 
through the grace of God, received in the "name 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our 
God." 5 

As to the kingdom ("Thy kingdom come") 
Cyprian does not have a very clear idea. He ap- 
parently makes it equivalent with our rejoicing 
w T ith Christ hereafter. He says also that Christ 
himself may be the kingdom of God, "whom we day 
by day desire to come, whose advent we crave to be 
quickly manifested to us." As to a progressive ex- 



3 De Dom. Orat. 8. 4 Ibid. 9, 10. 5 Ibid. 12. 



The Lord's Prayer. 143 

pansion of Christianity until the kingdoms of busi- 
ness, of pleasure, of national affairs, etc., become 
the kingdoms of Christ, or as to any missionary ap- 
plication of the prayer, Cyprian is silent. 6 

He has excellent remarks on "Thy will be done." 
He still speaks to us here. The will of God is what 
Christ taught and did. "Humility in conversation ; 
steadfastness in faith ; modesty in words ; justice in 
deeds ; mercifulness in works ; discipline in morals ; 
to be unable to do a wrong, and to be able to bear 
a wrong when done ; to keep peace with the breth- 
ren; to love God with all one's heart; to love Him 
because He is a Father ; to fear Him because He is 
God ; to prefer nothing whatever to Christ because 
He did not prefer anything to us ; to adhere insep- 
arably to His love; to stand by His cross bravely 
and faithfully ; when there is any contest on behalf 
of his name and honor, to show in words constancy 
in confession, in torture that confidence wherewith 
we do battle, in death that patience whereby we are 
crowned, this is to desire to be fellow-heirs with 
Christ ; this is to do the commandment of God ; this 
is to fulfill the will of the Father." 7 Surely these are 
golden words. We should also pray for those who 
are not in the Church, that they "who are as yet in 



6 De Dom. Orat. 13. 7 Ibid. 15. 



144 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

their first birth of earth, may, being born of water 
and of the Spirit, begin to be of heaven." 

The petition as to our daily bread Cyprian in- 
terprets as referring to ordinary food and wealth 
and to the Eucharist. In the one case we must not 
long for earthly food, for riches are deceitful and 
vanishing, besides being a snare to the soul. He 
takes literally Matt, vi, 34. The Christian is "pro- 
hibited from thinking of the morrow ; it is a contra- 
diction and a repugnant thing for us to seek to live 
long in the world since we ask that the kingdom 
of God should come quickly." The true daily bread 
is the Eucharistic food of salvation, which we re- 
ceive daily. This is the body of Christ referred to 
in John vi, 53, 58. If we remain separate from 
Christ's body as thus interpreted we can not be 
saved. 8 Here we have a foundation of monasticism 
on the one hand and of the highest sacramentarian- 
ism on the other. 

"P A orgive us our debts" makes the spirit of love, 
the spirit which forgives our enemies, absolutely in- 
dispensable to salvation or to the reception of any 
spiritual grace. No sacrifice is as important as this. 
Even the blood of martyrdom can not help us here. 
But Cyprian can not help bringing in even under 



8 De Dom. Orat. 18, 19. 



The Lord's Prayer. 145 

this head the great principle of unity. "Our peace 
and brotherly agreement is a greater sacrifice to 
God, — and a people united in one in the unity of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." 9 

Cyprian has a beautiful thought in regard to the 
petition, "Suffer us not to be led into temptation/' 
when he says that that takes away all boasting. We 
can not assume anything to ourselves in confession 
or suffering. "All is attributed to God, and what- 
ever is sought for suppliantly with fear and honor 
of God, may be granted by His own lovingkind- 
ness." 10 

We have the first witness to the Sursum Corda 
(upward, hearts). When we stand praying, says 
Cyprian (standing was the usual posture of prayer 
in the ancient Church, and always on Sunday), we 
ought to be watchful and earnest with our whole 
heart, intent on our prayers. The soul must think 
on nothing but the object of its prayer. "For this 
reason also the priest, by the way of preface before 
his prayer, prepares the minds of his brethren by 
saying : 'Lift up your hearts,' that so upon the peo- 
ple's response, 'We lift them up unto the Lord,' he 
may be reminded that he himself ought to think of 
nothing but the Lord." 11 



9 De Dom. Orat. 23. 10 Ibid. 26. 11 Ibid. 31. 

10 



146 Cyprian: Thk Churchman. 

Cyprian closes with some excellent rules as to 
prayer. (1) Be intent on what you ask. (2) Have 
a background of faithful, holy, and loving living to 
your prayers. Alms and good deeds are strong 
backers. (3) Observe regular hours of prayer. 
Daniel observed the third, sixth, and ninth hour, "as 
it were for a sacrament of the Trinity, which in the 
last times had to be manifested." 1 * Besides this we 
must pray in the morning, according to Ps. v, 2, and 
in the evening, because when the light of day de- 
parts we must ask for the advent of Christ, who 
shall give us the grace of everlasting light. There 
is no hour excepted for Christians wherein God 
ought not frequently and always to be worshiped. 
Day and night, therefore, let us pray. 13 



12 De Dom. Orat. 34, 13 Ibid. 35-6. 



CHAPTER XII. 
CYPRIAN THE CATHOLIC. 

It is not necessary to say that Cyprian — a Chris- 
tian than whom a more sincere and devoted never 
lived — held to all those ideas which the Churches 
Catholic and Protestant have in common. If the 
Apostles' and Nicene creeds had been presented to 
him he would have assented to them heartily. All 
the main facts of Christianity he held to tenaciously. 
In this chapter an effort will be made to state 
wherein he differed from evangelical Protestantism, 
wherein he shows that the world in which he lived 
in the middle of the third century was a Catholic 
world. 1 I shall attempt no special logical arrange- 
ment in the order of topics. 

Few Protestants would find fault with the state- 
ment of the nineteenth article of the Church of Eng- 
land. That the "visible Church of Christ is a congre- 
gation of faithful men, in which the pure word of 



1 I use the word Catholic here as the opposite of Protestant, — those 
points in which the Roman, Greek, Armenian, and other Eastern Churches 
agree among themselves, but differ from Protestantism. 

147 



148 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

God is preached, and the sacraments duly ministered 
according to Christ's ordinance in all those things 
that of necessity are requisite to the same." Here 
the Church is not the clergy, or the bishop, or a com- 
pany gathered around them, but a collection of be- 
lievers in Christ who chiefly exalt the word of God, 
and who in their time and place receive the sacra- 
ments. What was Cyprian's view of the Church? 
It is a company gathered around the bishops, who 
hold their authority from the apostles, and chiefly 
from Peter, who received first the commission of 
authority from Christ, and so is in a sense the foun- 
dation or origin of unity. All apostles have equal 
power with Peter, but since Peter was the first who 
was designated as the rock, he makes the beginning 
one and not many. So although there are many 
bishops who preside in the Church, yet the episco- 
pate is one and undivided, because it is the one chair 
of Peter. 2 In order to show forth this unity there 
can necessarily be only one bishop in a place, union 
with whom is the same as union with Christ. The 
Church is in the bishop because he is all, and to sep- 
arate one's self from the bishop is death and hell. 3 
"Does any one believe that in one place there can be 
either many shepherds or many flocks?" 4 Those 



2 De Unit. Eccl. 4, 5. 3 Ibid. 5, 6. 4 Ibid. 8. 



Gyprian the Cathouc. 149 

who separate from the Church as thus understood 
are lost. Their baptisms are spurious, all their ap- 
parent Christian acts are of the devil. 5 In fact, they 
never do thus separate unless they are themselves al- 
ready apostate. Their separation is on account of a 
perverse, strife-loving heart. 6 Even if they should 
give themselves in martyrdom for the Name, it 
would avail nothing. "He can not be a martyr who 
is not in the Church." 7 

As to baptism, it is not a sign or seal of grace 
received by faith, which is the only effective means 
of salvation, the root of the whole process, but it is 
itself the gate of salvation. In it we lay aside our 
earthly birth, are freed from death and the devil, 
are cleansed from sin, and regenerated. Baptism 
is the water of salvation and the water of life ; by it 
w r e live again ; it is the resurrection with Christ, the 
birth of Christians, the heavenly and spiritual birth, 
the second birth, the new birth. By it we become 
children of God and are made into the image of 
God. 8 Nothing could be more Catholic than Cyp- 
rian's idea of baptism. With baptism anointing was 
connected as to-day in Catholic Churches. "It is 



5 De Unit. Eccl. 11, 12. 6 Ibid. 13. 7 Ibid. 14. 

8 See K. G. Goetz, Das Christentum Cyprians, Giessen, 1896, 62-4, 
where references to Hand's edition are given for each of the above state- 
ments. 



150 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

also necessary that he should be anointed who is 
baptized, so that, having received the chrism, that is, 
the anointing, he may be anointed of God, and have 
in him the grace of Christ." 9 This attachment of 
spiritual grace to material means is thoroughly 
congenial to the mechanism of Catholicism. 

Equally "high" is his view of the Eucharist. It 
is the "protection of Christ's body and blood, ap- 
pointed to be a safeguard to the receivers that they 
may be armed against the adversary with the pro- 
tection of the Lord's abundance." 10 The Eucha- 
ristic bread is the food of salvation, the bread of 
heaven, prefigured by the manna; the cup makes 
us oblivious to the old man and the former evil life ; 
it brings back spiritual wisdom ; it is the intoxicating 
healthgiving cup ("the Holy Spirit is not silent con- 
cerning the sacrament in the Psalms, making men- 
tion of the cup of the Lord and saying, 'Thy best 
inebriating cup'"). Christ has drunk the saving 
cup ; his blood is wine, for he says, "I am the true 
vine." 11 Everywhere in Cyprian the Eucharist is a 
true offering. It is both a priestly self- 
offering of Christ, and an offering in his mem- 
ory. As both it is offered in the Church of God 
and partaken of. The Eucharist is the high priestly 

9 Ep. 70 (69), 2. 10 Ep. 57 (53), 2. 11 See K. G. Goetz, 6 7 . 



Cyprian thd Catholic. 151 

memorial offering, the offering of food and drink, 
which accompanies the bloody offering of Christ, 
and therefore, as the old high priestly offering of 
food, is celebrated morning and evening. It is the 
sacrifice of the new covenant, and it is valid as a 
sin-offering. The Eucharist is the self-offering of 
the Lord, not because it is a memorial offering for 
him on account of his sufferings, but because in the 
same Christ body and blood are indicated as bread 
and wine, and in their full meaning are made ap- 
parent and figuratively communicated. "And be- 
cause," says Cyprian, "we make mention of His 
passion (sufferings and death) in all sacrifice, for it 
is the passion which we offer as the sacrifice of the 
Lord ; for we ought to do nothing else than He did. 
For the Scripture says that as often as we offer the 
cup in commemoration of the Lord and of His pas- 
sion, we do the same that it is evident the Lord 
did/' 13 It would be too much too say that Cyprian 
had the fully developed sacrificial conception of the 
Eucharist common to later Catholicism, but he was 
a good way on the road, and he would be perfectly 
at home in the idea, if not in the method, of a High 



13 Hartel, 714. See K. G. Goetz, 87, whose thorough exposition ol 
Cyprian's views is objective and reliable, though his divisional terminology 
is whimsical, and calls forth the well-deserved rebuke of Ludemann in 
Theol. Jahresb. 16 (1896), 163. 



152 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

Church celebration. So the minister, or rather the 
bishop, is always a priest with him. 

An interesting question is that concerning the 
Churchly forgiveness granted to the penitent lapsed. 
Was this an act simply of earthly local jurisdiction, 
such as the taking back of a sinner in a Protestant 
Church, a recognition by the Church of what might 
be charitably assumed to have taken place between 
the sinner and God, or was it a real judicial com- 
munication in the name of Christ and in His earthly 
place of forgiveness and peace? In other words, 
was Catholic absolution as early as Cyprian? On 
one side of the question is Karl Goetz, on the other 
side is Karl Miiller. 14 The former has given us an 
exceedingly valuable pamphlet, but I can not but 
think that Miiller is nearer the mind of Cyprian. 
With Cyprian the Church is a divine institution in 
the fullest sense. What she, through her bishops, in 
communion with her presbyters, binds or looses on 
earth is bound or loosed in heaven. The Church is 
the bride of God, His house, His temple. To belong 
to her, to be at peace with her, is essential to the 
hope of salvation. These principles led Cyprian to 



14 Goetz (to be distinguished from K. G. Goetz), Die Busslehre 
Cyprians, Konigsb. in Pr., 1895 ; Miiller, " Die Bussinstitution in Karthago 
unter Cyprian," 3d part, in Zeitschrift f. Kirchengeschichte, Oct. 1895 
(xvi), 187 ff. 



Cyprian the: Cathouc. 153 

be more and more lenient with the lapsed, in regard 
to their return to the Church, as we have seen. In 
some way the Church must try to get them back 
before they die. Peace with her is necessary, if 
they would have peace with God. Her absolution of 
the penitent holds before God. Of course, this is only 
in the case God has Himself forgiven the penitent, 
and to assure the Church of that the martyrs' testi- 
monies come in. The role of martyrs has already 
been described. Their part in this feature of 
Church life has passed away; but in all Catholic 
Churches it still remains true — whatever differences 
in detail or in form may be seen in granting the ab- 
solution—that the Church as the indispensable 
vehicle of salvation hands out to the penitent the 
certificate of peace, without which (except to those 
debarred without their fault) salvation is impos- 
sible. This is the eternal note of Catholicism, and 
it goes straight back to Cyprian. The Catholic 
Church did well to canonize him. 15 The wholesale 
remission by martyrs or confessors Cyprian re- 
pudiated ; 16 but when the full amount of penitential 
works was accomplished, then remission by mar- 



is " I remit everything. . . . I almost sin myself in remitting sins 
more than I ought." (Ep. 59 (54), 16.) The sinner must confess his sins in 
this world, " while the satisfaction and remission made by the priests are 
pleasing to the Lord." (De Lapsis, 29.) 16 De Lapsis, 18. 



154 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

tyrs or bishops was entirely valid. In fact, it was 
necessary if the lapsed should be saved. 17 

Miiller calls attention to the fact that all along it 
had been recognized that those endowed with the 
Spirit could forgive sin. 18 What Cyprian did was 
to expand this to include the bishops as the divinely 
appointed heads of the Church, through whom the 
vSpirit spake as really as through the Spirit-gifted 
of old. Nor was it new with Cyprian that outside 
of the Church there is no salvation ; what was new 
was his definition of unity as centered in his kind 
of bishops. Even the martyr outside of Cyprian's 
kind of unity is lost. 19 Of course, no more than in 
the Catholic Church to-day does membership in 
itself guarantee salvation, but with Cyprian the 
earthly and heavenly Church coincided thus far that 
all penitents forgiven by the former were received 
by the latter, and only those. Cyprian never dreamed 
of that modern gloss invented by Jesuit and other 
theologians, that one might belong to the soul of 
the Church without actual membership in the body 
itself, and thus make a loophole for Protestants. 
With him no piety or good works outside of unity 
avail. He, like the older Roman Catholics, would 
have consigned all Protestants to hell without a 

W Ep. 57 (53). 1. 18 Z. K-G., 16, 199. 19 Ep. 55 (51): *7i 29. 



Cyprian the Catholic. 155 

moment's hesitation. The moderns in this respect 
are better Christians, but worse Catholics. 

It is not meant, of course, that the Roman Cath- 
olic paraphernalia of forgiveness was installed as 
early as Cyprian. That came after a long develop- 
ment. But the substance was there. The penitent 
sinner the Church forgave through her bishops, and 
what she loosed was loosed above. 

In regard to merit also Cyprian was Catholic. 
He had a well defined plan of salvation which he 
sketches in his book "Of Works and Alms." First, 
there is the atonement of Christ. "The Father sent 
the Son to preserve us and give us life; the Son 
was willing to be sent and to become the Son of 
man that He might make us sons of God ; humbled 
Himself that He might raise up the people who be- 
fore were apostate ; was wounded that He might heal 
our wounds ; served that He might draw out to lib- 
erty those who were in bondage; and died that he 
might set forth immortality to mortals. 20 Then, 
there is baptism which through the "blood and sanc- 
tification of Christ" washes away the stains of venial 
sin, and in the case of adults (penitence and faith 
in Christ being assumed) all the sins committed be- 
fore baptism. Now what about sins committed af- 



20 De Op. et Eleem. i. 



156 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

ter baptism ? Cyprian sees through the whole process 
with a lawyer's clearness. What would we do, he 
says, considering our weakness and human frailty, 
"unless the Divine mercy coming once more to our 
aid, should open some way of securing salvation by 
pointing out works of justice and mercy, so that by 
almsgiving we may wash away whatever foulness 
we subsequently contract." 21 He quotes Prov. xvi, 
6, "By almsgiving and faith sins are purged," 22 and 
Ecclesiasticus iii, 3, "As water extinguisheth fire, so 
almsgiving quencheth sin/' and attributes both 
passages to the Holy Spirit. "Here also," he adds, 
"it is shown and proved, that as in the laver of sav- 
ing water the fire of Gehenna is extinguished, so by 
almsgiving and work of righteousness the flames of 
sin are subdued. And because in baptism remission 
of sins is granted once for all, constant and cease- 
less labor, following the likeness of baptism, once 
more bestows the mercy of God." 23 Then by mis- 
quotation and misunderstanding of Luke xi, 41, he 
makes Christ responsible for this same teaching; 
after we have become foul after baptism, Christ 
teaches (Cyprian says) that by alms we may be- 
come clean. 24 



21 De Op. et Eleem. i. 22 Septuagint. 23 De Op. et Eleem. 2. 

24 For the interpretation of Luke xi, 41, see Meyer ad loc ; and 
Grimm, N. T. Lex. Ed. Thayer, s. cueist. Perhaps better still : things 
within the soul; that is, see that ye have soul qualities out of which ye can 
eive alms, then your good deeds will be acceptable. 



Cyprian th£ Cathouc. 157 

Cyprian is thoroughly committed to a work-holi- 
ness Christianity. This is partly due to his taking 
the Old Testament Apocrypha as law and gospel. 
If he had studied Paul more and Tobit less he might 
have reached different results. The "wholesome 
remedy which God has provided for the curing of 
our wounds anew" 25 is alms. In fact, by these God 
is propitiated. "By works of righteousness God is 
satisfied, and with the deserts of mercy sins are 
cleansed." 26 "Prayer is good, with fasting and 
alms ; because alms doth deliver from death, it purg- 
eth away sins." 27 This passage, says Cyprian, shows 
that our petitions become efficacious by almsgiving, 
that life is redeemed from dangers by almsgiving, 
that souls are delivered from death by almsgiving. 28 

The commercialism inherent in all forms of 
Catholicism comes out plainly in Ep. 76, I, where 
the reward to the martyrs in the mines is graduated 
exactly according to their hardship and tortures — 
"advancing by the tediousness of their tortures to 
more ample titles of merits, to receive as many pay- 
ments (tot mer cedes) in heavenly rewards as days 
counted in punishments." He has in view the 
"merit of religion and faith," so that they shall re- 



25 De Op. et Eleem. 3. 26 Ibid. 5. 27 Tob. 12 : 8, 9. 

28 De Op. et El. 5. 



158 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

ceive from the Lord, the "crown of their merits," 
by which the divine esteem (divina dignatio) has 
honored them. 29 

We get the same thing in the offerings of the 
Lord's Supper. Harnack says that Cyprian has ad- 
vanced the idea of offering or sacrifice in the cultus 
of the Church in three ways: 1. He assigned to a 
specific priesthood a specific offering, viz., the offer- 
ing at the Lord's Supper. 2. He has designated the 
passion of the Lord, even the blood of Christ and 
the Lord's host (dominica hostia) as the subject or 
object of Eucharistic offering. 3. He has definitely 
placed the celebration of the Lord's Supper under 
the point of view of the incorporation of the con- 
gregation and its single members in Christ, and 
was the first to witness in a distinct way that to the 
commemoration of those who make the offering 
(the living and the dead) a special significance is to 
be ascribed; though this is nothing but a strength- 
ened petition. 30 "In the sacrifices," says Cyprian, 
"I offer prayer with many, remembering you," etc. 31 
The Numidian captives were to present the names 
of the donors to their release in the sacrifices and 
prayers, 32 where sacrifice means the Eucharistic of- 



29 Dignatio is mistranslated by Wallis "condescension." It is a recog- 
nition of worth, esteem founded on merit. SO Dogmengeschichte 3. Aufl. 
I, 428 f ; Eng. tr. II, 136-7. 31 Ep. 37 (15}, 1. 32 Ibid. 62 (59), 4. 



Cyprian the Cathouc. 159 

fering. This offering could go to the credit of the 
dead as well as of the living. 33 We must not think 
cf this as the full-fledged Catholic purgatory and 
prayers for the release of souls therefrom, for there 
was no doubt that the martyrs at least were in the 
full felicity of Christ : but it was the. beginning of it. 
The Eucharistic offering availed for much. A man 
offers for his dead wife on the anniversary of her 
home-going in order, says Tertullian, "to help along 
her eternal quickening and her participation in the 
first resurrection." "It is the beginning of a cus- 
tom which afterwards was built up into the doctrine 
of purgatory, which was the chief lever for charity 
in the Middle Ages, yes, the central point around 
which it revolves. From a thank-offering the 
Eucharistic oblation becomes a work directed to 
the obtaining of grace." 34 

It seems also that in Cyprian w T e have the rudi- 
ments of the doctrine of the treasury of merits laid 
up with God, out of which help can come to those 
111 need. 35 He says that the perogatives of the mar- 
tyrs are able to help before God those who have re- 



33 For the living see 17 (11), 2; for the dead 39 (33), 3; 12 (36), 2. 

34 Uhlhorn, Christliche Liebesthatigkeit in der alten Kirche, a. Aufl., 
Stuttg. 1882, 138. 

35 This is the opinion of Wirth in his able and exhaustive Der Ver- 
dienst-Begriff in der christlichen Kirche, II, Der Verdienst-Begriff bei 
Cyprian. Leipz. 1901. See pp. 89 f., 138 flf., 143 f. 



160 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

ceived from them letters of peace, 36 — help them 
even with regard to their sins. 37 In extending favor 
to returning sinners God can have regard to what 
martyrs have asked for them or priests have done. 38 
Martyrs have merits more than sufficient for them- 
selves. Their martyrdom admits them to glory, 
so that all their other holiness, heroism, merits, 
fidelity, etc., is superfluous, so far as being neces- 
sary for them alone. It therefore goes to help others 
for whom they pray. This help will especially ac- 
crue at the Day of Judgment. We believe, he says, 
that the merits of martyrs and the works of the 
righteous are of great avail with the Judge; but 
that will be when the Day of Judgment shall come, 
when at the end of the world His people shall stand 
before the tribunal of Christ. 39 

These intercessions the saints departed also offer, 
If any of us shall go hence the first, our love may 
continue in the presence of the Lord, and our 
prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the 
presence of the Father's mercy. 40 O remember us, 
he asks the virgins, when virginity shall begin to be 
rewarded in you. 41 

This whole Catholic doctrine of merit as founded 



36 Ep. 18 (12), 1. 37 Ibid. 19 (13), 2. 38 De Lapsis, 36. 

39 Ibid. 17, Cf. Peters, Cyprian von Karthago, 154-5. 

40 Ep. 60 (56), 5. 41 De Habitu Virg. 24. 



Cyprian ths Cathouc. 161 

by Tertullian and Cyprian is as false as it is plausi- 
ble. We all owe to God a perfect service ; none of 
us has rendered it. What we are we have received, 
and what we have done we have done through God's 
grace. God rewards our good works, but this very 
reward is of grace. The holiest martyr has done 
only his duty, and if that should be put over against 
his sins, which would weigh the heavier? Good 
works are among the indispensable conditions of sal- 
vation for those who have opportunity to do them, 
because they are the fruit of love, which is the fruit 
and test of faith. But the philosophy of Christianity 
is in the familiar lines : 

" Nothing in my hands I bring, 
Simply to Thy cross I cling." 42 

Cyprian also laid the foundation of monasticism. 
The monastic spirit breathes all through his treatise 
"On the Dress of Virgins." All who are baptized 
have put off the old man in the saving laver, and 
have been renewed by the Spirit in a second na- 
tivity ; but the greater holiness and truth of that re- 
peated birth belongs to you (virgins) who have no 
longer any desires of the flesh and of the body. 



42 See also Wirth, lib. cit. 145ft", and the literature he refers to in the 
notes. 

II 



162 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

Only the things which belong to virtue and the 
Spirit have remained in you to glory. 43 There is the 
lower life for ordinary Christians, and the higher 
for those who crucify the flesh. He tells the lapsed 
that such sins as theirs require extraordinary sever- 
ities. They must wear out their nights in watchings 
and wailings, occupy all their time in lamentation, 
lie on the ground, cling close to the ashes, and be 
surrounded with sackcloth and filth. "After losing 
the raiment of Christ you must be willing now to 
have no clothing; after the devil's meat you must 
prefer fasting; be earnest in righteous works 
w r hereby sins may be purged ; frequently apply your- 
self to almsgiving whereby souls are freed from 
death. . . . Let all your estate be laid out for 
the healing of your wound." 44 Virginity, almsgiv- 
ing, poverty, coarseness and scantiness of clothing, 
despisal of the world, — all these are specially mer- 
itorious before God. 45 All the roots of monasticism 
are in Cyprian. To live ascetically, says Pontius, 
was his highest ideal. 46 



43 De Hab. Virg. 23. 44 De Lapsis, 35. 

46 See Wirth, 65, with notes. 46 Vita Cypriani, 2. See Boh- 

ringer, 835." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

WAS CYPRIAN A ROMAN CATHOLIC? 

We: must not suppose that Cyprian's Catholicism 
was that of later times. Ever and anon Christian 
sentiments burst forth, and principles both in doc- 
trine and life thoroughly in accordance with the 
Gospel. For it is written, he says, that the just shall 
live by faith. If ye are just and live by faith, if you 
truly believe in Christ, why, since you are about to 
be with Christ, and die secure of the Lord's prom- 
ise, do you not embrace the assurance that ye are 
called to Christ, rejoice that ye are freed from the 
devil? 1 Though such passages are rare, though 
Cyprian looks upon justification in a thoroughly 
legal way, as Wirth has abundantly shown in his 
section on his use of justificare, Justus, justitia, 2 
though the idea of merit is hardly absent in any of 
these passages, yet it was the Catholicism of the 
middle of the third century (not even of the fourth) 
which Cyprian represents. There is no purgatory 



1 De Mortal. 3. 2 Wirth, 128 ff. 

163 



164 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

in his writings, though there is, as we have seen, the 
helpful intercession of saints here and hereafter. 
God's people depart immediately at death to the 
celestial land to be with Christ. This is the under- 
tone everywhere of his book on "Mortality." 
This does not mean that the dead could not be bene- 
fited by the prayers and eucharistic commemora- 
tions of the living, for such commemorations were 
well established in Cyprian's time. "We always 
offer sacrifices for them, as you remember, as often 
as we celebrate the passions and days of the martyrs 
in the annual commemoration." 3 A man had ap- 
pointed a clergyman executor to his estate, contrary 
to the action of some council, and Cyprian, with his 
high priestly views, thought that these secular 
duties, which ministers then and long afterwards 
performed, interfered with their calling, and he 
therefore advises that "no offering shall be made 
to him, nor any sacrifice be celebrated for his re- 
pose." No prayer shall be made in the Church for 
him. 4 It therefore appears that, though the offer- 
ings for the martyrs were in the nature of commemo- 
rative thanksgivings and not to alleviate their lot 
(for they went immediately into full felicity), yet it 
was believed that for others prayers and sacrifices 



3 Ep. 39 (33), 3. See also 12 (36), 2. 4 Ibid. 1 (65), 2. 



Was Cyprian a Roman Cathouc? 165 

could conduce to their repose, — where we have the 
germs of the mediaeval purgatory, indigencies, etc. 

There is no mariolatry in Cyprian. If Mary's 
name is ever mentioned, it is only casually. 

The chief question is Cyprian's relation to the 
see of Rome. Did he acknowledge the bishop of 
Rome as supreme pontiff of the Church, whose au- 
thority as a ruler and infallibility as a teacher must 
be respected at all hazards ? We have already seen 
that Cyprian's conception of the Church was that 
of an organization grouped around the bishops. 
The bishop was the center of the Church, and each 
bishop was co-ordinate with every other. Their 
united decision in council was binding on the 
province which they represented, though in mat- 
ters of conscience each bishop could take his own 
line, so long as he remained in external unity with 
his brethren. There could only be one canonically 
elected bishop in a town. If another is elected he is 
by that very fact outside of the Church, outside of 
salvation, outside of the covenanted mercies of God. 
"'They are a Church, who are a people united to a 
priest, and the flock which adheres to its pastor. 
Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the 
Church, and the Church in the bishop; and if any 
one be not with the bishop, he is not in the Church. 



166 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

The Church which is catholic and one is not cut 
nor divided, but is indeed connected and bound to- 
gether by the cement of priests who cohere with 
one another." 5 "There is one God/' he says, "and 
one Christ, one altar, one priesthood, and one chair 
founded upon the rock of the word of the Lord." 6 
That was the chair of Peter upon which the Church 
was to be built. Now the question is : Is that chair 
the see of Rome to which all must be obedient, from 
which all must receive law, or is it the episcopate 
which traces its descent back to the apostles, 7 and 
especially to Peter as the first in time to whom 
Christ granted authority in the Church? Or if 
agreement with the chair of Peter (Rome) is neces- 
sary, is it only when that chair remains in union 
with the Christian tradition and the universal epis- 
copate ? In the last analysis, who rules the Church, 
the episcopate or the Roman bishop ? 

The bishops demand and weigh the evidence of 
the election and fitness of Cornelius as Bishop of 
Rome, and only after that do they acknowledge him. 
They labor to maintain the unity delivered by the 
Lord through His apostles and to us, his successors, 
and it is ours to gather in the wandering sheep, 8 — 

5 Ep. 66 (68), 8. Priest and priesthood generally mean bishop and 
episcopate with Cyprian. 6 Ibid. 43 (39), 5. 

7 "Christ says to the apostles, and thereby to all chief rulers who by 
vicarious ordination succeed to the apostles," 66 (68), 4. 8 45 (41), 3. 



Was Cyprian a Roman Cathouc? 167 

a passage which makes the episcopate the guardians 
of unity. The bishop of Rome, however, is part of 
that unity, and they therefore feel it necessary to 
support him, 9 him who occupies the place of Peter 
and the grade or degree (gradus) of the sacerdotal 
chair. 10 Rome is the chair of Peter and the chief 
(principalis) Church, whence sacerdotal unity takes 
its rise, 11 — one of those delightful complimentary ex- 
pressions which may mean much or little, and whose 
meaning must after all be interpreted by the whole 
life history of the man who used it, and who evi- 
dently did not place all the weight on it a later 
Roman would, for in this very letter he denounces 
those who carry appeals from Africa to Rome, as 
though (he says sarcastically) the authority of the 
bishops in Africa seems too little. But even Peter, 
says Cyprian, whom first (primum) the Lord chose, 
and upon whom Pie built His Church, when Paul 
disputed with him concerning circumcision, did not 
claim anything to himself insolently, nor arrogantly 
assume anything so as to say that he held the pri- 
macy, or that he ought to be obeyed by novices and 
those lately come, 12 — from which it is apparent that, 
although in Cyprian's mind Peter had a certain 



9 Ep. 48 (44), 3- 10 Ep. 55 (Si), 8. 11 Ep. 59 (54), 14. 

12 Ep. 71 (70), 3. 



168 Cyprian: The; Churchman. 

primacy (not necessarily the same as supremacy), 
it did not show itself either in the Tightness of his 
opinions or in his insisting on them. 

Another interesting passage seems to confirm 
the impression already received that Peter's primacy 
was due to simple priority in time, that thus he was 
the source of unity, but that in all substantial re- 
spects other apostles were fully equal to him. He 
is speaking of the power of remitting sins in 
baptism. He says that "first of all the Lord gave 
that power to Peter, upon whom He built the 
Church, and whence he appointed the source of 
unity — the power, namely, that whatsoever he 
loosed on earth should be loosed in heaven. After 
the resurrection He speaks to the apostles, saying 
(here he quotes John xx, 21-23). Whence we per- 
ceive, says Cyprian, that all those who are set over 
the Church and established in the Gospel law, are 
allowed to baptize and to give remission of sins 
(not those outside). Here the primacy of all the 
apostles is made co-ordinate in spiritual functions 
with the prior chronological primacy of Peter. 13 
The token or source of unity is Peter, because to him 
alone the charge was first given; but the powers 



13 Ep. 73 (72), 7. The same thought is in Firmilian to Cyprian, 
75 (74), 16. 



Was Cyprian a Roman Cathouc? 169 

thus given were subsequently shared by all abso- 
lutely alike. That is Cyprian's thought. 

More interesting still is the inference of Firmil- 
ian, who echoes Cyprian, that the Roman bishop is 
only in the succession of Peter when he is true to 
Peter's doctrine. He is denouncing Stephen, the 
bishop of Rome, for advocating the efficacy of bap- 
tism by heretics. "Nor does he (Stephen) under- 
stand that the truth of the Christian rock is over- 
shadowed and in some measure abolished by him 
when he thus betrays or deserts unity." 14 

Nor does it appear that this general result is 
affected by the famous passage in his early book 
(251), the "De Unitate Ecclesise," even with the 
alleged interpolations (in italics), which I now cite: 

The Lord said unto Peter (here follows Matt, 
xvi, 18, 19). And to the same He says after His 
resurrection, Feed My sheep. He builds His 
Church upon that one and to him intrusts His sheep 
to be fed. And although after His resurrection He 
assigns equal power to all His apostles and says 
(cites John xx, 21-23). Nevertheless in order to 
make the unity manifest He established one chair, 
and by His own authority appointed origin of the 
same unity beginning from one. Certainly the rest 

14 Ep. 75 (74), 17. 



170 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

of the apostles were that which Peter also was, 
endued with equal partnership both of honor and 
office, but the beginning sets out from unity, and 
primacy is given to Peter that one Church of Christ 
and one chair may be pointed out; that all are 
apostles, and one flock is shown to be fed by all the 
apostles with one-hearted accord — that one Church 
of Christ may be pointed out. It is this Church 
which the Holy Spirit in the person of the Lord 
speaks of in the Song of Songs, saying : "My dove 
is one, My perfect one, one is she to her mother, 
elect to her who brought her forth." He who holds 
not this unity of the Church, does he believe that 
he holds the faith? He who strives and rebels 
against the Church, he who deserts the chair of 
Peter on which the Church is founded , does he trust 
that he is in the Church ? 15 

Here we have the Cyprianic principles of unity 
just as in his Epistles, (i.) Unity springs from 
Peter, because he was the beginning of these grants 
of power from Christ. We must hold, therefore, 
with him. (2.) Exactly the same power was given 
to all the apostles, who derive this, not from Peter, 
but from Christ. But in true-hearted accord they 
stand in with Peter, whose chair is the beginning 



16 De Unit. Eccl. 4. For full textual apparatus see Benson, 549-52. 



* Was Cyprian a Roman Cathouc? 171 

and symbol of unity. Nothing is said here about the 
authority and the infallibility of the bishops of 
Rome, whether those bishops might not err, or if 
they did what should be the proper attitude toward 
them. If the italicized words are really interpolated, 
would they not have stated the Roman claims more 
explicitly, would they not have echoed later con- 
troversies, would they have simply been content to 
round out the passage to bring it into harmony with 
later utterances of Cyprian ? It is by no means true 
that Cyprian is represented here as teaching 
the cardinal doctrine of the Roman see. 16 It is a 
cardinal teaching, but it is not her special doctrine. 
Protestants believe that the Church was founded 
upon Peter in a special sense, historically shown 
by his work with the Jews in Acts ii and with the 
Gentiles in Acts x. They believe it is necessary to 
hold with him in order to be in the unity of the 
Church, and they believe firmly that if the chief 
pastors in Rome had always remained true to him, 
union with them would also be in a sense a symbol 
and test of unity. There is nothing specially Roman 
in the full text, interpolated or not, in the Unity of 
the Church. 

The real questions are: Did Cyprian hold that 

16 Benson is wrong here, 203. 



172 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. * 

the bishop of Rome had in himself plenary authority 
in the Church? That he was an infallible teacher? 
That all bishops are under him and hold from him ? 
In other words, did the fact that Peter was the be- 
ginning and foundation of unity guarantee the later 
claims for those who were supposed to sit on his 
seat? Two or three facts from Cyprian's life will 
answer these questions. 

Two Spanish bishops, Basilides, of Leon, and 
Martial, of Merida, had received certificates of idol- 
atry, and thus according to the custom of the Church 
had debarred themselves for life from office. Ba- 
silides had also blasphemed Christ in sickness, and 
Martial had joined a pagan guild or college with 
its heathen rites, and had two of his children buried 
with these rites. They subsequently repented, went 
to Rome, and apparently received assurances from 
Stephen, the new bishop there, that he would still 
regard them as bishops. Cyprian apologizes for 
Stephen on account of distance and ignorance 
("went to Rome and deceived Stephen our col- 
league, placed at a distance, and ignorant of what 
had been done, and of the truth, to canvass that he 
[Basilides] might be replaced unjustly in the epis- 
copate ,, ). This created a new situation. Who 
were the real bishops of Leon and Merida — the de- 



Was Cyprian a Roman Cathouc? 173 

posed bishops, bishops recognized still by Stephen, 
or their successors, lawfully elected and dedicated? 
For advice as to this the Churches themselves ap- 
peal not to Stephen, but to Cyprian and his African 
brethren. A council is held at Carthage, 254 (the 
Fourth Cyprianiac Council), and the result is given 
in Cyprian's letter 67. 

This is a most interesting letter. It gives Cyp- 
rian's answer to the question, Does grave sin in- 
validate ministerial acts? He answers with an 
emphatic Yes — buttressed as usual with Old Testa- 
ment passages like Ex. xix, 22 ; xxviii, 43. And all 
who can unite with such a priest share in his defile- 
ment. The letter also shows that the laymen of the 
local Churches must be present at the election of a 
bishop, not, it would appear, formally to elect by 
casting votes, but to investigate as to character of 
the nominee and to signify to the bishops present as 
to his fitness, — the final decision being with the 
clergy and bishops present, but never without the 
presence and co-operation of the laymen. Some- 
times the laymen, as we have seen, played the con- 
trolling role. The neighboring bishops laid on hands 
in consecration. But the significance of the letter 
here is that Stephen's part in this Spanish business 
is brushed aside as of no account whatever, and de- 



174 Cyprian: The Churchman. 

cision given according to the well-known Cyprianic 
principles, as though there were no Roman bishop 
in the world. 17 

Marcian, bishop of Aries in France, had joined 
the Novatians so far as not to admit the lapsed, 
however penitent and desirous. As this in Cyprian's 
opinion endangered their souls, he was much exer- 
cised over it. A bishop of Lyons had called his at- 
tention to it. If the neighboring bishops would not 
do their duty in electing a successor to Marcian, it 
was the bishop of Rome's duty, as the bishop of 
the nearest so-called apostolic see and of the great- 
est Church of the West, to urge them to do it. But 
Stephen was apparently unconcerned. Therefore 
Cyprian writes him, calling his attention to the 
moral responsibility of all the bishops of the uni- 
versal flock, and urging him to write to the laymen 
of the Aries Church to the effect that Marcian be 
excommunicated and another substituted. He is 
also asked to write to the bishops of the province 



17 Ep. 67. Peters (Cyprian von Karthago, 483) is in error in saying 
that on the return of Basilides from Rome most of the Spanish bishops 
changed their attitude toward him and Martial, and acknowledged them 
as brothers in office. All that Cyprian says is that "some among our col- 
leagues rashly hold communion with Basilides" (67,9), though whether 
Stephen's action had anything to do with it we do not know. Peters also 
says (p. 486) that Cyprian is not giving a judgment, but an opinion. But 
the utmost decision and positiveness rings through the letter; there is not 
the least consciousness of a revision of its judgment being possible. 



Was Cyprian a Roman Catholic? 175 

to see to it that Marcian no longer "insults an as- 
sembly/' It does not appear that Stephen's action 
would be different from that of any other promi- 
nent bishop in urging discipline on neighboring 
Churches. Cyprian's whole letter, with its freedom 
of address and consciousness of equality, does not 
bespeak the papacy in the historic sense. 18 The re- 
mark of Peters that Cyprian here acknowledges 
Stephen's ordinance and immediate jurisdiction over 
the whole Church is so nearly made out of whole 
cloth that it may be taken as a type of such state- 
ments made by Roman partisan historians. 19 

The most famous case, however, is the quarrel 
with Stephen over the baptismal question, and that 
deserves a separate chapter. 



18 Ep. 68 (66). 

19 Peters, 479. My judgment of this whole aspect of Cyprian's 
Catholicism is borne out by K. G. Goetz, who says that for Cyprian the 
" basis of the Church is an intellectual legal conception which expresses 
itself in the political institution of the episcopate as a college, as a body 
(corpus), not of the Roman episcopate alone." He says that the fact that 
Cyprian designates the universal episcopate as a college (collegium) shows 
that he ascribes to all the bishops equal power and equal right (Recht), and 
he quotes Mommsen (Abriss d. rom. Staatsrecht, 120) as saying that the 
" fact of being in a college (Collegialitat) demands the equality in rights of 
the officers in the college, therefore the equal title and equal authority in 
office." See Goetz, Das Christentum Cyprians, 128, and note. Substan- 
tially the same view comes out in the thorough study of a Roman Catholic 
scholar, J. Delarochelle, L'idee de 1'eglise dans St. Cyprien, in Etudes 
d'Hist. et deLitter. relig. 1896, No. 1, 519-33. Though the Roman bishop 
was the official representative of unity, all bishops were equal in power 
and honor. He says that Cyprian's conception of the Church was an 
imperfect one, and did not comport with the fact of the Roman primacy. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE GREAT CONTROVERSY WITH 
ROME. 

It was the universal belief in the third century 
that baptism washed away the stain of original sin, 
made the baptized a child of God, and thus brought 
him into the family of the redeemed. Along with 
this was the idea of the Church as the ark of salva- 
tion, outside of which all were swept away by the 
devouring floods. Now as soon as movements 
arose which the larger Church disowned, or forced 
out into separate existence, the question arose, 
What about the baptism administered by those out- 
side, either by those heretical, or schismatic, or 
both? Does their baptism give life, does it incor- 
porate into Christ, does their repetition of the Name 
give the blessing of the Name? If so baptism need 
not be repeated; if not, all baptized by heretics or 
schismatics must be baptized again, their former 
baptism not being a real baptism at all. On the one 
side of this question stood Cyprian, on the other, 
Stephen, bishop of Rome. 

176 



Th£ Gr^at Controversy with Rome. 177 

It must be confessed that Cyprian had the better 
tradition, so far as testimonies attest it. Clement of 
Alexandria called baptism by heretics no proper and 
genuine baptism. 1 Tertullian energetically pro- 
tested on the same side. Heretics have nothing 
common with the Church, not the same God, nor the 
same Christ, and therefore not the same baptism, 
and therefore one can not receive baptism from 
them. 2 In the latter half of the second century, the 
Montanists of Asia Minor, who agreed with the 
Church on all essential matters of doctrine, precipi- 
tated a discussion of the subject, and at synods 
held at Iconium and at Synnada, baptism outside of 
the Church was rejected. 3 "Heretics can neither 
baptize nor do anything holy and with the Spirit 
because they are foreign to spiritual and divine 
sanctity." 4 Hippolytus says that Callistus was the 
first to introduce a repetition of baptism in Rome. 5 

We do not know how the controversy begun. 
The first document seems to be a letter of Cyprian 
to Magnus, A. D. 205, in answer to a question 
whether the Novatianists in returning to the so- 



1 Strom. 1, 19. 

2 De Bapt. 15, written in premontanist period, says Bonwetsch, against 
Benson, 338. See the admirable article by Bonwetsch, Ketzertaufe und 
Streit dariiber, in Hauck-Rerzog, Realencyk. f. protest. Theol. u. Kirche, 
(1901), 270-5. 3 Eusebius H. E. 7 : 7, 5. Firmilian in Cypr. Ep. 75 (74), 7. 

4 Firmilian, as in rote 3. 6 Philos. 9, 7. 

12 



178 Cyprian: The Churchman. 

called Catholic Church should be rebaptized. 
Cyprian answers with his usual decision and per- 
emptoriness. He never balks at the fact that Novatian 
held the Catholic faith ; the mere fact that he is out- 
side of what he (Cyprian) calls the Catholic Church 
decided the issue. He has departed from "charity 
and the unity of the Catholic Church/' and on the 
ground of Matt, xviii, 17, he is worse than a heathen 
and a publican, because he has "forged false altars, 
lawless priesthoods and sacrilegious sacrifices, and 
has corrupted names." The Church is one, bap- 
tism is one, and baptism is in the Church only, ac- 
cording to Eph. v, 26 ; how then can any one outside 
be cleansed with the saving laver? If any one says 
that they hold the same Trinity and the same inter- 
rogatory in baptizing as the Church — and Cyprian 
quotes the interrogatory, Dost thou believe the re- 
mission of sins and life eternal through the holy 
Church? — then the answer is, They lie, since they 
have not the Church. Cyprian refers to the history 
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who knew the same 
God as Moses, yet because they set up in opposition 
to Aaron, they were punished for their irreligious and 
lawless endeavors. All who joined with them were 
punished also, as it shall be also with the schismatics 
and all who follow them. How can those without 



The: Great Controversy with Rome. 179 

the Holy Ghost confer the Holy Ghost, as baptism 
does ? Baptism is the remission of sins, and it is there- 
fore necessary that those who baptize should have 
the Holy Ghost. But by the fact that it is the uni- 
versal custom of the Church in receiving those bap- 
tized without to lay hands on them that they may 
receive the Holy Ghost, it is confessed that they 
have not the Spirit. It is certain, therefore, that those 
thus baptized have not received the remission of 
sins. To receive this, then, they must be baptized 
with the baptism of the Church, where only re- 
mission of sins may be had. 6 

False and arbitrary exegesis was not wanting. 



6 Ep. 69 (75). This epistle closes (12-16) with an answer to the ques- 
tion whether those who have been sprinkled on a sick-bed are sanctified 
(so-called clinic baptism). While Cyprian distinguishes this from the reg- 
ular " washing of salvation," from " ecclesiastical baptism," which at this 
time was always by immersion, he says it is valid and need not be supple- 
mented by ordinary baptism. If the clinics have had faith, if their subse- 
quent life shows the reality of their faith, they received the full mercy of 
God. Nothing need be added. For (1) washing of sins is a different mat- 
ter from the washing of the body, where water and saltpeter and the other 
appliances are needed. " In another way is the heart of the believer 
washed ; in another way is the mind of man purified by the merit of faith." 
(2) Sprinkling was recognized by God as a symbol of cleansing, according 
to Ezek. xxxvi, 25-6; Num. viii, 5-7; xix, 8-13. Hence sprinkling of water 
"avails equally with the washing of salvation ; and when this is done in the 
Church (that is, in the society, or in communion with the Church), where 
the faith both of the giver and the receiver is sound, all things hold, and 
may be consummated perfectly by the majesty of the Lord and by the 
truth of faith." (3) Facts show that those "baptized by urgent necessity 
in sickness, and obtain grace, are free from the unclean spirit, and live in 
the Church in praise and honor," which is a proof that they have received 
the Spirit. 



180 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

"They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living 
waters, and have hewed out broken cisterns which 
can hold no water," 7 refers to the schismatics. Of 
their baptism the warning applies, "Keep thee from 
strange water, and drink not from the fountain of 
strange water." 8 John's prophecy of antichrists 
refers to them. 9 Can these give the grace of Christ? 
The water used in baptism must first be cleansed 
and sanctified by the priest. But how can a schis- 
matic priest cleanse when he himself is unclean. 
"Whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be 
unclean." 10 Besides, every baptized person is also 
anointed with oil so that he may be anointed of God, 
and have in him the grace of Christ. But the oil is 
sanctified on the altar, where the Eucharist is of- 
fered; but how can a heretic or schismatic do that 
when he has neither the Church nor the altar ? See, 
too, what the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms : "Let 
not the oil of the sinner anoint my head." 11 Again 
what prayer can a priest who is impious or a sin- 
ner offer for a baptized person ? Since it is written, 
"God heareth not a sinner, but if any man be a 
worshiper of God, and doeth His will, him He hear- 
eth." 12 With such relentless logic, built on such 
perverted Scripture, did the good bishop condemn 

7 Jer. ii, 13. 8 Prov. ix, 19 (LXX). 9 1 John ii, 18, 19. 

10 Num. xix, 2. n Ps. cxh, 15 (LXX). 12 John ix, 31. 



The Great Controversy with Rome. 181 

the baptism of all outside his episcopal unity as 
sacrilegious, and their persons as utterly lost to 
the grace and mercy of God. 13 "He that is bap- 
tized by one dead, what availeth his washing ?" 14 

What were the arguments of Stephen? Unfor- 
tunately we have not an epistle of his extant. All 
we can do is to get a glimpse here and there of the 
contrary arguments from the correspondence of 
Cyprian. First, "they say they follow ancient cus- 
tom." 15 Cyprian explains this by the fact that the 
first heretics had previously been baptized in the 
Church, and, of course, when they returned it was 
not necessary to rebaptize them. Besides, he says, 
no custom can stand against reason. Again it is 
said: He who is baptized might receive remission 
of sins according to what he believed. 16 Cyprian 
replies to this that no one can have true faith out- 
side of the Church. Either they are manifestly 
heretical like Marcion and other heretics, or they 
are perfidious, blasphemous, and contentious, which 
makes their faith no faith. Some quoted Phil, i, 
18, but that refers to envious brethren within the 
Church, not to baptism by those outside. 17 Others 
say : All who are baptized anywhere and anyhow in 



13 Ep. 70 (69). 14 Ecclus. xxxiv, 25, (Ep. 71 (70), 1). 

16 Ep. 71 (70), 2. 16 Ep. 73 (72), 4. 17 Ibid. I 14. 



182 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

the name of Christ have obtained the grace of bap- 
tism. 18 Not so, replies Cyprian, for not every one 
that says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of 
heaven. Only those things which are done in the 
truth of Christ are accepted by Him. It is said that 
this non-acknowledgment will debar heretics from 
coming back. Not at all ; it will have just the con- 
trary effect. Why should he come back if he has 
true baptism? Having that, they will think they 
have everything. But when they know that no re- 
mission of sins can be given outside of the Church, 
they will eagerly hasten back to us. 19 

The two chief points of Stephen were tradition 
and the majesty of the Name. While Cyprian will 
not acknowledge that there is any true tradition on 
Stephen's side, he makes a powerful plea against 
tradition dominating truth. 20 One can almost hear 
the strains of the old Protestants controverting 
Rome. "What obstinacy, what presumption to pre- 
fer human tradition to Divine ordinance, and not to 
observe that God is angry when tradition relaxes 
or passes by the divine precepts, as he says by 
Isaiah, 'This people honoreth Me with their lips, 
but their heart is far from Me. In vain do they 



18 Ep. 73 (72), 16 ff. In these sections of this great epistle Cyprian 
argues cogently against the validity of baptism by Gnostic Christians. 

19 Ep. 7 2 (72), 24. 20 Ep. 74 (73). 2-4, 9. 



The Great Controversy with Rome. 183 

worship me, teaching the doctrines and command- 
ments of men.' " "Nor ought custom, which had 
crept in among some, prevent the truth from con- 
quering, for custom without truth is the old age of 
error." 

As to the Name availing, they really confess that 
it does not avail, because they (Stephen and his 
party) always lay their hands on the returning 
heretic that he may receive the Holy Spirit. But by 
allowing his baptism they allow that in a real sense 
he has already received the Holy Ghost. He has 
been sanctified, his sins have been washed away, he 
has put on Christ, and can Christ be put on without 
the Spirit, or the Spirit be separated from Christ? 
Water alone is not able to sanctify, unless a man has 
also the Holy Spirit. Later he receives the Holy 
Spirit in fuller measure in the anointing and im- 
position of hands, but this would be impossible if 
he had not already been born by baptism into the 
Holy Spirit. 21 

As to the merit of the arguments of the two con- 
testants, it is evident that if we grant Cyprian's prem- 
ises we must grant his conclusions. No writings of 
Cyprian, except his plea against the pagans, have 
such power, vigor, swing, and ring, as these six 



21 Ep. 74 (73), 5-7- 



184 Cyprian: The Churchman. 

epistles. 22 No wonder the man who wrote them 
dominated his age. The Roman bishops of the time 
are names only who would hardly be known were it 
not for Cyprian's writings. Besides, his premises 
were the premises of the Church. His main points 
rested deep in the ecclesiastical consciousness of his 
time. No one believed that a heretic could be saved, 
or that there was salvation outside of the Church. 
What was baptism then, administered there? An 
empty, unauthorized rite, a sacrilege. It could have 
no more saving efficacy than a boy's swim. Its ac- 
knowledgment as granting remission of sins in view 
of the repetition of a formula was both on the one 
hand the crassest magic, and on the other, the log- 
ical subversion of every principle held by the Cath- 
olic Church. As a triie Catholic and a sharp-sighted 
reasoner, Cyprian went straight to the mark. If 
heretics had true baptism, they had remission of 
sins; if they had remission of sins, they had sanc- 
tification; and if they had sanctification, they had 
the temple of God. 23 Against that Stephen's feeble 
arguments broke as waves against a rock. 

But what do these famous six letters teach as to 
Cyprian's attitude to the Roman bishop as the 
teacher and ruler of Christendom? Does the unity 



22 Ep. 69-74 (75, 69-73). 23 Ibid. 73 (72), 12. 



Thd Grsat Controversy with Rome:. 185 

of the Church which goes back to Peter, and which 
consists in the mutual concord of forbearance and 
independence of the bishops, guarantee the purity 
of doctrine and supremacy of rule of all who chance 
later to occupy Peter's alleged chair? Here the 
great Carthaginian holds another line. Throughout 
his letter to Stephen there is not the slightest con- 
sciousness that he is to defer to him. 24 He gives his 
judgment on the question at hand, and presents his 
arguments, with not more feeling of dependence on 
Stephen's decision, than one Methodist bishop 
would do in relation to another in arguing for lay 
delegation, or an Anglican to his brother bishop 
against the compulsory use of the xA.thanasian Creed. 
The historical situation behind these six epistles 
(seven, counting the strong and remarkable letter 
of Firmilian to Cyprian 25 ) is as different as day 
from night from that assumed in the Roman view. 
If that view is true, we are as historians in a topsy- 
turvy world. 

Let us hear Cyprian himself on Stephen. He 
says that faith and religion of the sacerdotal office 
compel us to ask whether that priest can render a 
satisfactory account to God on the day of judgment 
who maintains the baptism of blasphemers, and he 



24 Ep. 72 (71). 26 Ibid, 75 (74). 



186 Cyprian: The Churchman. 

quotes Mai. ii, 12, where God says that if priests 
will not give glory to Him He will send a curse 
upon them, and will even curse their blessings. Then 
Cyprian launches forth in this terrible indictment of 
Stephen, who, according to the Roman view, is the 
infallible teacher of all Christians. Does he give 
glory to God who communicates with the baptism 
of Marcion? Does he give glory to God who 
judges that remission of sins is granted among those 
who blaspheme our God? Does he give glory to 
God who affirms that sons are born to God without, 
of an adulterer and harlot? Does he give glory to 
God who does not hold the unity and truth that 
spring from the law divine, but maintains heresies 
against the Church? Does he give glory to God, 
who, a friend of heretics and an enemy of Chris- 
tians, thinks that the priests of God who support 
the truth of Christ and the unity of the Church are 
to be excommunicated? If glory is thus given to 
God, if the fear and the discipline of God is thus 
preserved by His worshipers and priests, let us cast 
away our arms ; let us give ourselves up to captivity ; 
let us hand over to the devil the ordination of the 
Gospel, the appointment of Christ, the majesty of 
God; let the sacraments of the divine warfare be 
loosed; let the standards of the heavenly camp be 



Ths Grsat Controversy with Rome. 187 

betrayed ; and let the Church succumb and yield to 
heretics, light to darkness, faith to perfidity, hope 
to despair, reason to error, immortality to death, 
love to hatred, truth to falsehood, Christ to Anti- 
christ. Deservedly thus do heresies and schisms 
arise day by day, grow up more often and more 4 
fruitfully, and with serpents' locks shoot forth and 
cast against the Church of God with greater force 
the poison of their venom; whilst by the advocacy 
of some, both authority and support are afforded 
them, whilst their baptism is defended, truth is be- 
trayed, and that which is done outside against the 
Church is defended within the very Church itself. 26 
But letters were not the only weapons used 
against Rome. Three councils were held in Car- 
thage, 255-6, the second with seventy-one bishops, 
the third with eighty-seven from the provinces of 
Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania, all with presby- 
ters and deacons and laity, and reached a unanimous 
(in the second and third, almost in the first) con- 
clusion to baptize all heretics and schismatics com- 
ing to them, on the ground that their former bap- 
tism was null or profane. 27 How different this from 

26 Ep. 74 (73), 8. 

27 On the first council see Ep. 70 (69) ; on the second see 72 (71) ; and 
on the third see Sentential Episcoporum, or the judgment of 87 bishops on 
the baptism of heretics (the seventh council of Carthage under Cyprian) 
in Migne 3, 1079-1102, and transl. in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Edinb. ed. 
13,199*; N - Y. ed. 5,565 ff. 



188 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

the modern Roman theory by which no council can 
be held without the permission of the pope, and 
when held its conclusions are invalid until he in- 
dorses them. They did things differently then. 

It should be said that, however intense Cyprian's 
beliefs and feelings on this question, so hearty was 
his regard for the independence of each bishop, for 
mutual respect and tolerance inside the Church, that 
he said distinctly that no bishop is compelled against 
his conscience to adopt his views or those of his 
compeers. 28 I prescribe to no one, says Cyprian, I 
prejudge no one, I prevent no bishop doing what 
he thinks well. Let each have the free exercise of 
his judgment. Charity and priestly concord must 
be maintained with patience and gentleness. 29 
Stephen broke with him, he did not break with 
Stephen. 30 



28 Ep. 69 (75), 17. 29 Ibid. 73 (72) «6. 

30 On the question whether Stephen actually excommunicated Cyprian 
the best view is that of Ernst, " War der HI. Cyprian Exkommuniniziert," 
in Zeitschrift fiir Katholische Theologie, 18 (1894) 473 fF., that while Cyprian 
was threatened with the Church ban, it never actually fell upon him. In 
the latter case a formal schism would have taken place between Africa and 
Rome, and this did not happen. From a supposition expressed in Augus- 
tine, it has been supposed by some that Cyprian later retracted his senti- 
ments on this question. This in an article in the same journal, 19 (1895) 
234 ff), Ernst also shows to be unfounded. Nor did Firmilian and the 
Asiatic bishops ever retract. For the later history of this baptismal strife 
see the article by Bonwetsch mentioned in note 2, p. 177, above. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE CROWNING. 

Cyprian had almost six years of uninterrupted 
activity in Carthage as a bishop, March or April, 
251 — June, 257. But the end was near. Valerian, 
an emperor of some noble qualities, who reigned 
253-60, was at first friendly to the Christians, think- 
ing thus to win them. But under the influence of 
his prime minister, Macrian, helped along by the 
vague terror of pestilence and barbarian invasions, 
believing that the close knit society — firmly held to- 
gether by the bishops in a compact organization that 
nothing could shake — was a menace to the unity of 
the State, whose interior disunion through the Chris- 
tian Church within was now meeting the disinte- 
gration threatened by Franks, Alemanni, and other 
tribes without — under this stimulus the patriotic 
Valerian determined to break up the Church as an 
organization. In June, 257, he issued his first edict 
to this end. There was to be no general persecu- 
tion of private Christians, but the united external 

189 



190 Cyprian: Thd Churchman. 

life of the Church was to be destroyed. All as- 
semblies of Christians were forbidden, as well as 
meetings in graveyards and at the tombs of mar- 
tyrs, and this by penalty of death. The clergy were 
to be banished and in every possible way isolated 
and watched. 1 The expectation was that, cut off 
from their leaders, the people would naturally and 
inevitably go back to their old gods. Dionysius, the 
great and pacific bishop of Alexandria, was ban- 
ished, and it soon came Cyprian's turn. Genuine 
Acts give the story. 2 

The proconsul Aspasius Pat emus. The most 
sacred emperors, Valerian and Gallienus, have done 
me the honor to send me a dispatch in which they 
have directed that persons not following the Roman 
religion must conform to the Roman ceremonies. I 
have, in consequence, made inquiries as to how you 
call yourself. What answer have you to give me? 
[Notice the method of trial by interrogation. Ac- 
cused assumed to be guilty, and must prove him- 
self innocent. This was the beauty of Roman law, 
and was followed in all the heresy trials to within 
modern times. Happy the accused for whom tor- 
ture did not also form a part of the question.] 

Cyprian. I am a Christian and a bishop. I 

1 Eusebius, H. E. vii, 11 ; Cyprian. Act. procons, 1. 

2 I follow here the version of Benson, Cyprian, 465-6. 



The Crowning. 191 

know no other gods than the one and true God, 
who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in 
them is. He is the God whom we Christians wholly 
serve. Him we supplicate night and day for our- 
selves and for all men and for the safety of the 
emperors themselves. 

Pat emus. In this purpose, then, you persevere ? 

Cyprian. That a good purpose, formed in the 
knowledge of God, should be altered is impossible. 

Paternus. Well, will it be "possible" for you, in 
accordance with the directions of Valerian and 
Gallienus, to take your departure as an exile to the 
city of Curubis? 

Cyprian. I depart. 

Paternus. They have done me the honor of 
writing to me not about bishops only, but about 
presbyters, too. I would therefore know from you 
who are the presbyters who reside in this city. 
[Compare the similar question of Annas to Christ, 
John xviii, 19.] 

Cyprian. You have by your own laws made 
good serviceable laws against the very existence of 
informers. Accordingly it is not in my power to 
discover and delate them. However, they will be 
found in their several cities. [Wise answer by the 
sage old lawyer.] 



192 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

Paternus. My question refers to this day and to 
this place. 

Cyprian. Inasmuch as our discipline forbids any 
to offer themselves spontaneously, and this would 
also go counter to your legislation, they are unable 
to offer themselves. But if you search for them 
they are to be found. 

Paternus. I shall have them found. They [the 
emperors] have directed further that no assemblies 
are to be held, and they are not to enter cemeteries. 
So if any one fails to observe this salutary direc- 
tion he will be capitally punished. 

Cyprian. Do as you are directed. 

Then the Acts add: Thereupon Paternus sen- 
tenced the blessed Bishop Cyprian to be deported 
(deportari) into exile. 3 

This sentence carried with it loss of citizenship. 
It required special direction from the emperor be- 
fore it could be inflicted, and for that reason the 
proconsul quoted the "prsecept" of Valerian for 
banishing him to Curubis. 4 

Curubis (Kourba) was a little coast town fifty 
miles from Carthage at the back of the eastward 
promontory of the Gulf of Tunis. It was a para- 
dise compared with some places to which exiles 
were sent. 



3 Acta Proc. i, 21. 4 See Benson, 466-7. 



The Crowning. 193 

The first night in which Cyprian slept at Curubis 
he had a dream of the proconsul, in which he had 
a premonition of his fate. It was one of those 
strange, circumstantial dreams which, either by laws 
of the soul not yet fully understood, or by some 
impression from above, reveals the future with life- 
like vividness. Many instances of such dreams are 
oft record, and thousands have occurred of which 
the record was hid in the heart of the person af- 
fected, or the matter told only to immediate friends. 
Some explain them as simply a coincidence, others 
bring in a higher law. 5 

Compared with Cyprian's lot in exile, that of 
nine of the thirty-one Numidian bishops who had 
sat with him in council was hard indeed. They 
were doomed to chained labor in the mines, where 
their treatment was so cruel that some died under 
it, and others were in prison. They had been beaten 
with cudgels, which showed that they belonged to 
the lower classes, and is at the same time an indi- 
cation of the democratic character of ancient Chris- 
tianity as to the orders in society to whom it made 
its chief appeal, and from whom it drew its offi- 
cers. These bishops, presbyters, and others "toiled 
in the dark at piles of ore, choked with the smoke 



5 For this dream see Pontius, Vita Cypriani, 12 ; Benson, 469-70. 

*3 



194 Cyprian : Ths Churchman. 

of smelting furnaces, half fed, half clothed, half 
their hair dipt off, sleeping on the ground/' Cyprian 
contributed to their needs, and also sent them a 
letter full of praise for their sufferings and heroic 
endurance. He says they "advance by the tedious- 
ness of their tortures to more ample titles of merit, 
to receive as many payments in heavenly rewards 
as days are now counted in their punishments." The 
Lord has lifted them to the lofty height of glory, and 
Cyprian interprets this in noble and sympathetic 
spirit as but the rewards of their fidelity, seeing 
that they have guarded the faith, kept firmly the 
Lord's commands, in simplicity have preserved in- 
nocence, in charity concord, modesty in humility, 
diligence in administration, watchfulness in help- 
ing those that suffer, mercy in cherishing the poor, 
constancy in defending the truth, and judgment in 
severity of discipline, — a description of the model 
minister or bishop as valid to-day as in 257. With 
all Cyprian's Catholic sacramentarianism he recog- 
nized the fact that now while "there is given no 
opportunity to God's priests for offering and cele- 
brating the divine sacrifices," they are all the while 
by their sufferings in Christ's name "offering a 
sacrifice to God equally precious and glorious, and 
that will greatly profit you in heavenly rewards." 



The Crowning. 195 

He then quotes Ps. li, 17, and says : "You celebrate 
this sacrifice day and night, being made victims to 
God, and exhibiting yourselves as holy and un- 
spotted offerings, as the apostle exalts," in Rom. 
xii, 12. Thus it is that "our works with greater 
deserts are successful in earning God's good will." 6 

The answer of the martyrs of the mines throbs 
with loving appreciation of Cyprian, his character, 
his words, his example, and his gifts. By these 
things he has refreshed their suffering breasts, has 
healed their limbs wounded with clubs, has loosened 
their feet bound with fetters, has illuminated the 
darkness of their dungeon, has brought down the 
mountains of the mine to a smooth surface, and 
shut out the foul odor of the smoke. 7 O ye mutual 
sufferers ! your spirit of love and unselfish en- 
durance, your heroic constancy foj: Christ, breathes 
upon us across the centuries, shames our ease and 
listless devotion, and stimulates us to do and dare 
for your Master and ours ! 

The result of the edict of 257 did not suit Vale- 
rian or his councilors. The Church was not being 
uprooted fast enough. The senate had apparently 
so represented matters to the emperor. The latter 
accordingly sends a second rescript in the summer 

6 Ep. 76. 7 Ibid. 77. 



196 Cyprian: The Churchman. 

of 258. It ran thus in its steel-like sharpness and 
precision : 

"That bishops, presbyters, and deacons be im- 
mediately punished with death. Senators and men 
of high rank and knights of Rome forfeit their dig- 
nity, be deprived of their goods, and if after being 
deprived of their means they persist in being Chris- 
tians, be also capitally punished; their matrons be 
deprived of their goods or relegated into exile ; and 
that all Caesareans [inferior officers of the fiscus, 
or imperial treasury, who were under the rationalis 
or chancellor of the exchequer] 8 who have either 
confessed before or confess now suffer confiscation, 
be put in bonds, entered in the slave lists, and sent 
to work on Caesar's estates." 9 

It is evident that the author of this edict in- 
tended to destroy Christianity root and branch. "It 
is plain that the higher ranks were felt to be honey- 
combed by Christianity," which shows that with all 
its attraction to the poor, Christianity was universal 
in its appeal and power, "while the special provision 
about the Caesarians illustrate the kind of employ- 
ments into which, as free from idolatrous taint, the 



8 Csesariani were not palace officers, as often understood, nor "people 
of Caesar's household," as Wallis translates, but under-officials of the treas- 
ury. See Benson, note 8, p. 480, whose legal and antiquarian information 
is accurate and minute. 9 Ep. 80 (81), 1 



The Crowning. 197 

Christians crowded." And the edict was imme- 
diately put into effect. Confiscation and executions 
began at once. Sixtus (Xistus or Xystus), bishop 
of Rome, visited a forbidden cemetery on Sunday, 
August 6, 258, and was then and there put to death, 
along with four of the seven deacons of the city. 

Rumors of an impending change in policy had 
been rife, and to secure the facts Cyprian had dis- 
patched messengers to Rome to find out "in what 
manner it had been decreed respecting us." Almost 
before the edict had reached Africa, Cyprian knew 
its exact purport. He wrote immediately to a 
brother bishop, Successus, who was himself soon 
martyred, gave him the terms of the rescript, the 
latest news from Rome as to its execution, and 
urged him and his brethren to constancy. Let these 
things be made known to our colleagues, he says, 
that everywhere the brotherhood may be strength- 
ened and prepared for the spiritual conflict, that 
every one of us may think less of death than of 
deathlessness, and, dedicated to God, with full faith 
and courage may have no dread, only gladness, in 
this confession, in which we know the soldiers of 
God and Christ are not slain but crowned. 10 

The new proconsul Galerius Maximus, on re- 



10 Ep. 80 (81), 2. 



198 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

ceiving the rescript, summoned Cyprian from his 
exile in Curubis to appear before him. Apparently 
by illness Galerius was detained at Utica, twenty 
miles northwest of Carthage. He ordered Cyprian 
to keep to his own house in Carthage until he could 
hear him. Strange luck that he should have had a 
few final days in his own beautiful gardens ! In- 
fluential friends, Christian and pagan, urged him to 
flee. But he felt no inward promptings, and abode 
his time. Soon Galerius sent messengers to bring 
him to Utica, but Cyprian got wind of it, and pre- 
ferring to die in Carthage, absented himself till the 
proconsul was well enough to come to Carthage 
itself. From this retreat Cyprian wrote his last let- 
ter of that marvelous correspondence to which we 
are so greatly indebted for the knowledge of the 
Church history and polity of the third century. This 
short letter is so interesting as the last word of one 
of the greatest and bravest of the Church's wit- 
nesses that the reader ought to have it before him 
in full: 

"Cyprian to the presbyters and deacons and all 
the people, greeting. When it had been told us, 
dearest brethren, that the military clerks had been 
sent to bring me to Utica, and I had been persuaded 
by the counsel of those dearest to me to withdraw 



The Crowning. 199 

for a time from my gardens, and as a just reason 
was offered, I consented. For the reason that in 
this city in which he presides over the Church of 
the Lord is the place where the bishop ought to 
confess his Lord and to glorify his whole commons 
(the people) by the confession of their own prelate 
in their presence. But the honor of our Church, 
glorious as it is, will be mutilated if I, a bishop 
placed over another Church, receiving my sentence 
or my confession at Utica, should go there as a 
martyr to the Lord, when, indeed, for my sake and 
yours, I pray with continual supplication and en- 
treaty with all my desires that I may confess among 
you and suffer there, and thence depart to the Lord 
as I ought. Therefore here in a hidden retreat I 
await the arrival of the proconsul at Carthage, and 
hear from him what the emperors have commanded 
concerning Christian laymen and bishops, and may 
say what the Lord may wish to be said at that hour. 
"But do you, dearest brethren, according to the 
discipline which you have read from me out of the 
Lord's commands, and according to what you have 
so often learnt from my discourses, keep peace and 
tranquillity, nor let any of you stir up any tumult ' 
for the brethren, or voluntarily offer himself to 
the Gentiles. For when arrested he ought to speak, 



aoo Cyprian : The: Churchman. 

inasmuch as the Lord abiding in us speaks in that 
hour, who willed that we should rather confess than 
profess. But for the rest, what it is fitting that we 
should observe before the proconsul passes sen- 
tence on me for the confession of the name of God, 
we will with the instruction of the Lord arrange in 
common. May our Lord make you, dearest breth- 
ren, to remain safe in His Church, and condescend 
to keep you. So be it through His mercy." 11 

It was a common opinion in times of persecution 
that in the last supreme act of witnessing the Holy 
Spirit breathed a special message through the one 
about to suffer, 12 and it was that opinion which 
Cyprian voices in this letter. He naturally wanted 
to utter any word of that kind among his own flock. 
But at the last, as we shall see, the Spirit gave no 
sign, and Cyprian was silent. The martyrdom itself 
was sufficient. 

Soon the proconsul arrived in Carthage, and 
Cyprian returned to his gardens. On September 
13, 258, a chariot drove through them to the door 
of Cyprian's villa. In it were two principes or cen- 
turions, — one an officer of the legion and the pro- 
consul's strator or equerry, the other a prison guard 
or officer. They find Cyprian at once, lift him into 



11 Ep. 81 (82). 12 For instances see Benson, 496. 



The: Crowning. 201 

the chariot, and drove away. His wish was ful- 
filled, he was to die among his people. Pontius, his 
deacon-biographer, tells us how his "serious joyous- 
ness" of expression was transfigured by the manful 
heart to lofty eagerness and almost mirthfulness. 13 
"For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh 
the world; and this is the victory that hath over- 
come the world, — our faith." 14 The proconsul was 
not well enough to proceed with the case. He there- 
fore postponed the hearing till the morrow, and 
committed Cyprian to the safe-keeping of one of the 
officers, who kept him in his own house. 

The next day he was taken before the proconsul. 
He was arraigned for sacrilege, which included 
every offense against religion, as the Romans un- 
derstood it, and Cyprian would be the last man to 
deny that he was guilty of it. The proceedings 
were by questions and answers as before, but this 
time even more brief. 

The Proconsul Gcderius Maximus. You are 
Thascius Cyprianus. 

Cyprian. I am. 

Gcderius. You have lent yourself to be a pope to 
persons of sacrilegious views. 

Cyprian. I have. 

13 Vita Cypriani, 6, 15. 14 1 John v, 4. 



202 Cyprian : The; Churchman. 

Galerius. The most hallowed emperors have 
ordered you to perform the rite. 

Cyprian. I do not offer. 

Galerius. Do consider yourself. 

Cyprian. Do what you are charged to do. In a 
matter so straightforward there is nothing to con- 
sider. 

How brief, yet how fateful! The proconsul 
conferred with the council, as that was required in 
serious sentences, though he was not necessarily 
bound by their opinions. Then he said : 

Galerius. Your life has long been led in a sacri- 
legious mode of thought ; you have associated your- 
self with a large number of persons in criminal com- 
plicity ; you have constituted yourself an antagonist 
to the gods of Rome and their sacred observances. 
Nor have our pious and most hallowed princes, 
Valerian and Gallienus the Augusti, and Valerian 
the most noble Caesar, been able to recall you to the 
obedience of their own ceremonial. And, therefore, 
whereas, you have been clearly detected as the insti- 
gator and standard-bearer in very bad offenses, you 
shall in your own person be a lesson to those whom 
you have by guilt of your own associated with you. 
Discipline shall be ratified with your blood. [He 
then took the prepared tablet and read :] Our pleas- 



The Crowning. 203 

ure is that Thascius Cyprianus be executed with the 
sword. 

Cyprian. Thanks be to God. 15 

The Christian multitude standing around sent 
up the cry: "And let us be beheaded, too, along 
with him/' Surrounded by a guard from the Third 
Legion, Cyprian was led out to an open level space 
in the city, followed by thousands of his fellow- 
citizens, Christian and pagan. Many of the latter 
were in sympathy with him, partly on account of his 
shining life, partly on account of the masterly and 
loving way in which he showed himself the city's 
friend in the time of her awful visitation. In the 
midst of his deacons and presbyters Cyprian stood. 
He took off his white woolen cape, and then knelt 
on the ground in prayer/ After this would have 
been the time for that word of the Lord, if any 
were to be given him. But he did not speak. He 
who had visions and occasional revelations from the 
Lord, as he believed (and the age of the prophets 
was still in the memory of the Church, and his great 
teacher, the Master, Tertullian, was himself a Mon- 
tanist), was denied anything like that now. There 
was nothing that he could distinguish from his own 
thoughts. So he was silent. "He might disappoint 

15 Acta Proc. 3, 4. See Benson, 501 ff. 



204 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

the people, but he would not delude them for their 
own good." 

It was the headman's office to execute the sen- 
tence, — the carnifex, or speculator, not the cen- 
turion who had command of the party. Unnerved 
by the large sum given him by Cyprian, or touched 
by sympathy, or for some other reason, the heads- 
man could scarcely grasp the hilt of his great sword. 
Noticing him tremble, the centurion immediately 
stepped forward, and to the kneeling and blind- 
folded bishop did the work with one powerful 
stroke. 

"And so suffered the blessed Cyprian." 16 

The age of suffering unto death for conscience' 
sake, is, we trust, gone forever. But the last words 
of his last book were: "If persecution finds God's 
soldier in this mind, . . . and he is called away 
without suffering martyrdom, the faith which was 
ready to welcome it will not lose its reward. The 
wages of God are paid in good interest without any 
deduction for lack of opportunity. The crown is 
given for field service in time of persecution; in 
time of peace it is given to him who is certain of 
his will." 17 

What is the abiding significance of Cyprian? 



16 Acta Proc. 5. 17 Ad Fortunatum, at end. 



The Crowning. 205 

In history he is known as the great Churchman. 
Full credit is given in this book to the wonderful 
active persistence, and even self-sacrifice, with which 
he defended and illustrated his High Churchly views. 
It is shown how they underlay all his thinking and 
work, and how his consistency and earnestness here 
even led him to his great breach with his brother 
of Rome, a breach which must have cost him heart- 
agony. And his intellectual and literary power and 
fertility, his piety and single-hearted devotion to 
Christ, and the almost preternatural insight with 
which he saw the real meaning and drift of the 
Catholic Church of his time, which found its truest 
incarnation in him, and the energy and enthusiasm 
with which he set that Church forward, — all this 
brought it about that the essential things for which 
Cyprian stood passed into the very blood of the 
ancient Church. In every Catholic Church of Chris- 
tendom to-day, Roman, Greek, Russian, Armenian, 
and High Anglican, — he still lives and moves and 
has his being. Such world-significance is surely 
justification enough for treatment in a series like 
the present. 

But from the standpoint of Christianity this is 
not the chief significance of Cyprian. We know that 
his view of the Church, all his so-called Catholic 



206 Cyprian : Thd Churchman. 

views, were narrow, mechanical, false, unscriptural. 
We know, too, that if he had never lived the Cath- 
olic development would not have been essentially 
different. He represented his age, he did not create 
it. Old Ignatius said in germ most of the things 
he said. No, the eternal lesson of Cyprian is not 
here. It is here : a true soldier of Jesus Christ. 
According to his light, according to his conscience, 
he served Him from his conversion to his martyrdom 
with utter fidelity and with brave-hearted and broad- 
hearted love. On this account he speaks to us to- 
day, to every layman, and especially to every min- 
ister. O brother men! across the fields of history 
do we hear his voice urging us as true soldiers to 
stand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand ? 
"Gazing down on us amid the conflict of his name," 
he says, "God approves those who are willing, aids 
the fighters, crowns the conquerors." 18 And let 
every minister hear himself described in the vivid 
military imagery of the mine-martyrs to Cyprian: 
"As a sounding trumpet thou hast caused the sol- 
diers of God equipped with heavenly armor for the 
shock of battle, and in the forefront thou hast slain 
the devil with the sword of the Spirit. On this side 

18 Ep. 7 6, 4. 



The Crowning. 207 

and on that thou hast marshaled the lines of the 
brethren by thy words, so that snares might be laid 
in all directions for the foe, the sinews of the com- 
mon enemy be severed, and carcasses trodden under 
foot." 19 

19 Ep. 77, 2. 



APPENDIX I. 

The: Interpolations in the "De Unitate 
Eccussia" 

The) famous passage in chapter 4 of the "De 
Unitate Ecclesiae" is quoted above, page 169, the 
italicized portions being those usually designated as 
interpolated. In my judgment the matter is not of 
great importance, as the interpolations are par- 
alleled by other utterances of Cyprian, whose gen- 
uineness has never been disputed ;■ and as they do 
not and can not affect one's judgment of Cyprian's 
real view as to Roman supremacy, which rests on 
evidence demonstrably certain, therefore in the 
exposition of that view above I have made no cap- 
ital out of the interpolations. We may therefore 
in a quiet spirit estimate the evidence. 

There are no manuscripts of Cyprian extant 
which are earlier than the sixth or seventh century. 
The two oldest are S. and V., — the Seguier of the 
library of Paris, which contains the most genuine 
readings and the oldest forms of words, and the 

208 



Appendix I. 209 

Verona, given to Charles Borromeo by the canons 
of Verona. Both are of the sixth or seventh cen- 
tury, it is not certain which. Both are without the 
interpolations. 

The next oldest series are the Benventanus, or 
the Neapolitanus (date not assigned), W (Wurz- 
burg) of the eighth or ninth, some say seventh, 
century, R (Reginensis), and the G (San Gallen- 
sis) of the ninth. Not one of these has the ad- 
dition. 

Now as there was no reason in the ancient 
Church to leave out the words, if they were genu- 
ine, the evidence of Lower Criticism is decidedly 
against them. Such evidence against a disputed 
Bible text would be decisive. 

On the same side are the following facts. A 
great scholar, Latini, who was working in Rome 
about 1550, said he had seen seven Cyprian manu- 
scripts in the Vatican in which all these words in 
question were wanting. Baluze, who published his 
edition of Cyprian in Paris in 1726, said that he had 
examined twenty-seven manuscripts, not one of 
which had the interpolations. Bishop Fell, in his 
Oxford edition of 1682, used four English codices, 
not one of which had the italicized words. Other 
English texts have the post-resurrection charge to 
14 



210 Cyprian: The Churchman. 

Peter, but not the interpolated words. These are of 
the tenth century or later. Baluze says that the 
German MSS. of the eleventh century did not con- 
tain the words, nor are they found in any of the 
editions of Cyprian which appeared before that of 
Manutius in 1563, and which represent many of the 
MSS. now lost. See the exhaustive discussion of 
Benson, 200 ff. On the principles of text criticism 
the disputed words are doubtful. Their absence 
from nearly all of the oldest manuscripts is a 
weighty fact. 

Harnack says that Pelagius I, in a letter of 558- 
60, first edited by Lowenfeld (Bpp. Pontiff. Rom. 
ineditce 1885, 15.), cites the "De Unitate" 4 with- 
out knowing the interpolated sentences ; while Mer- 
cati shows that the sentences are presupposed in a 
letter of Pelagius II about 585. They are found in 
Q. (Troyes codex of the eighth or ninth century), 
in M. (Monacensis or the Munich codex of the 
ninth), and in a Bodleian of the tenth or eleventh, 
all of which go back to one original, a lost manu- 
script. From this Harnack concluded in 1899 that 
the interpolation is not much later than the middle 
of the sixth century, and is of Roman origin. See 
TheoL Literaturzeitung, 1899, No. 18, 517. 

The disputed words appeared first in print in the 



Appendix I. 211 

edition of Paulus Manutius, Rome, 1563. Latino 
Latini did the editing in a conscientious and ac- 
curate manner. When the edition was going 
through the press certain changes and additions 
were made. "Whether," says Latini, "it was at the 
mere pleasure of certain persons or of set design, 
he knew not, some passages were retained contrary 
to the evidence of the manuscripts, and even some 
additions made." This so disgusted Latini that he 
withdrew both his name and his anotations from the 
edition, nor would the Vatican authorities allow Ep. 
8 (2) — the Roman clergy to Cyprian — to appear in 
this edition, nor the famous letter of Firmilian (75 
[74] ). In a copy of Manutius's edition in the Uni- 
versity Library in Gottingen there are copies of 
manuscript notes by Latini. Against this passage 
in Un. 4 is the note : "These words were added out 
of a single manuscript belonging to Virosius [cler- 
ical error for Vianesius], of Bologna, now in the 
Vatican, by P. Gabriel, the Poenitentiary, with the 
consent of the master of the sacred palace." From 
this interesting history it is fortunate that all the 
editions of Cyprian before 1563 (except the old 
Black Letter of 1471) were published outside of 
Rome, — and there had been about seventeen of 
them. 



212 Cyprian: Thd Churchman. 

In the Revue Benedictine, Abbaye de Maredsous, 
Belgium, Nos. 3 and 4, 1902, No. 1, 1903, Dom John 
Chapman has given a defense of the genuineness 
of the disputed text. There is a brief reply to this 
by E. W. Watson, Professor of Ecclesiastical His- 
tory in King's College, London, in the Journal of 
Theological Studies, London, April, 1904, 432 ff., 
with a defense by Chapman in the next number of 
the same Journal, 634 ff. The reasons given by the 
learned Benedictine are as follows : 

( 1 ) The thouglit in the alleged interpolations is 
thoroughly Cyprianic. There was no necessity for 
a forgery. 

(2) The style is also unmistakably Cyprianic. 
Watson agrees with these two points. "There is 
nothing inconsistent either in style or in thought 
in the so-called interpolations with the Cyprianic 
authorship," — Watson, 433. 

(3) No one living at that time could have been 
the author but Cyprian. (But look at the swarm of 
writings of that age and later which went under 
Cyprian's name, and of so close imitation that they 
deceived the very elect. Even now Cyprian experts 
are at variance as to some of these writings.) 

(4) Not only Bede, but fathers of the fifth and 
even of the fourth century knew the text as inter- 



Appendix I. 213 

polated, and from the circumstances of the origins 
of the interpolations, they must belong to the third 
century. If they went back so far they must have 
had a Cyprianic origin. But besides chapter 19 
was changed in the copy intended for Rome. If 
chapter 19, why not chapter 4? 

(5) The mystery of the texts is solved in this 
way. Cyprian wrote first a copy of the De Unitate 
for the congregation at Carthage in view of the 
threatened schism of Felicissimus. This copy was 
the original, and did not have the alleged interpola- 
tions. Soon after he wrote another copy to meet 
conditions in Rome, the schism of the confessors, 
Novatians, etc. In this copy he enlarged his first 
draft, calling attention to the Petrine chair, the 
necessity of union with it, etc. Now the Carthagin- 
ian copy was the basis of all the later copies. When 
the collections of Cyprian's writings were made it 
was always the Carthaginian De Unitate which hap- 
pened to be included, not the enlarged Roman. But 
some manuscripts did preserve the Roman reading, 
which explains the existence of the enlarged chap- 
ter 4 in a manuscript nearly as old as the oldest. 
The Carthaginian shorter copy was that, however, 
which happened to be at the back of nearly all the 
existing manuscripts. 



214 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

This thesis of Chapman's has won the weighty 
approval of Harnack and of the enthusiastic young 
Cyprian scholar, von Soden. The former says that 
although Chapman's view is not free from objec- 
tion, it is admirably established, and, in his opinion, 
is correct. He says that the interpolations must 
belong to the fourth century, perhaps to the third, 
and that, moreover, Cyprian says here no more than 
he says elsewhere. The thought belongs to the 
third century. It is no mere Roman falsification. 
See Theol. Literaiurzeitung, 1903, Nr. 9, 262-3. 
Von Soden gives his indorsement to Chapman in 
his "Die Cyprianische Briefsammlung," Leipz. 1904, 
p. 21, note, p. 202. 

It seems to me, however, that Watson shows 
here better critical sense. This theory of two 
Cyprianic editions of the "De Unitate," one for 
Carthage and another enlarged for Rome, and that 
the lean kine of the former ate up the fat kine of 
the latter, that the African copy in a country that 
was later decimated by Vandal and Mohammedan, 
became the predominant type, so that manuscripts 
of Roman reading became well-nigh lost, — this 
theory, it must be confessed, is a large draft on 
credulity. Would not Rome have immense inter- 
est in circulating her edition ? Would it not in time 



Appkndix I. 215 

entirely supplant the scanty and far-away Cartha- 
ginian product, especially after the disappearance of 
the Carthaginian Church? Would not this bring 
it about that the shorter recension, if it survived at 
all, would have been considered doubtful, and even 
spurious ? 

On the supposition of later interpolations these 
huge improbabilities are avoided. The fact seems 
to be that some one in the papal interest, well versed 
in Cyprian, added to the "De Unitate" words and 
sentences taken from other places in his writings 
or having his stamp, in order to make him speak 
there much more decidedly for Peter's chair. 



APPENDIX II. 

Chronological Ord^r of ths Episti^s. 

This must be made out by the most careful and 
patient study of the epistles themselves, with all 
the light that can be obtained from every other 
source. The old Oxford scholars, Pearson, Fell, 
and Dodwell, tried their hand at this, and their re- 
sults appeared in the Cyprianic publications of 1682 
and 1684 (See App. III). Their arrangement was 
accepted in the critical edition of Hartel, and is 
that used in all scientific work since. Migne fol- 
lows the order of Baluzius, and gives besides under 
each epistle the numbers of Erasmus, Pamelius 
(1574, last ed. 1664), Rigaltius (Paris, 1648), Ox- 
ford, Leipzig, and Paris (1836). His order is that 
unfortunately accepted in the Ante-Nicene Chris- 
tion Library (Ante-Nicene Fathers). I suggest to 
each owner of the latter, who is especially inter- 
ested in Cyprian, to make out his own key of the 
Oxford-Migne arrangement by noticing the Oxford 

216 



Appendix II. 217 

number given in a note under each epistle in the 
Ante-Nicene edition. Otto Ritschl subjected this 
question to a restudy in the most thorough fashion, 
as appears in his Latin Licentiate thesis, "De Epis- 
tolis Cyprianicis," Hallis Saxonum, 1885. See also 
his Anhang, "Die Chronologie der Cyprianischen 
Briefe," in his "Cyprian und die Verfassung der 
Kirche," pp. 238-49. He there prefers the follow- 
ing order (using Oxford-Hartel numbering) : 63, 
1, 7, 5, 6 > 8, 9, i3i H, I2 , "* I o, 21, 22, 15, 16, 
17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 

33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 44, 48, 
46, 47, 50, 49, 53, 51, 52, 54, 55, 64, 59, 65, 56, 57, 
58, 60, 62, 61, 66, 2, 4, 3, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 67, 
72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81. Fechtrup's order 
for 5-19 is 5-7, 13, 14, 12, 11, 10, 15-19. Of the 
epistles in this order he places all to 12 before A. D. 
250, nth at the beginning of a new persecution, 
the rest in July- August, 250. 

As to subject groups, 39 epistles (5-43 Oxford- 
Kartel numbering) belong to the first period of 
Cyprian's episcopate, during his absence from 
Carthage in the Decian persecution; 23 (44-61, 64- 
8) are concerned with questions which arose out of 
the persecution after its close and after his return ; 
7 (69-75) on rebaptism ; the last 6 (76-81) belong to 



218 Cyprian: Th£ Churchman. 

Valerian's persecution and the closing year of 
Cyprian's life; the six remaining (1-4, 62, 63) are 
outside of the main development of the history. See 
"Cyprian's Correspondence" in Church Quarterly 
Review, July, 1892, 381 ff (vol. 34). 



APPENDIX III. 

Select Literature. 

The first edition of Cyprian's works appeared in 
Rome, 1471, and an independent edition at Venice 
the same year. An early edition was without year 
or name of printer, the editio innominata, The six- 
teenth century was prolific, a sign of the awakened 
interest in patristic study due to the revival of learn- 
ing and the Reformation. There were no less than 
twenty-one editions and reprints, the first being the 
Paris edition by Rembott, 15 12, and the Basel edi- 
tion by Erasmus, 1520, which last was celebrated 
as containing the "De Duplici Martyris ad For- 
tunatum," which was written by Erasmus himself 
and passed off as Cyprian's. The seventeenth cen- 
tury saw many editions, notably these, Rigaltius, 
Paris, 1648, and Fell and Pearson, Oxford, 1682. 
The most important of the later are: Baluzius 
(with the Mauriner Maranus after Baluzius's 
death) Paris, 1726, Goldhorn, Leipzig, 2 vols., 
1838-9, Migne, Paris, 1844, anf i the careful and 

219 



220 Cyprian: The Churchman. 

critical edition of Hartel, Vienna, 3 vols., 1868-71, 
which is that used and referred to in all books and 
articles on Cyprian published since 1871. 

Cyprian's friend and deacon, Pontius, wrote his 
life (De Vita Cypriani) published in all editions 
and translations of his works. The genuine Acta 
Proconsularia Martyrii Cypriani appears in Ruinart, 
"Acta Martyrum," Amsterdam, 1713, and in von 
Gebhardt's "Acta Martyrum selecta," Berlin, 1902, 
124-8. Modern lives, often with dissertations on 
various Cyprianic questions, are by Pearson, "An- 
nates Cyprianici," Oxford, 1682, Maranus, Vita 
Cypriani, in Baluzius, Paris, 1726; H. Dodwell, 
"Dissertationes Cyprianicae," Oxford, 1684; in the 
great collection of Tillemant, "Memoires" IV, 76 ff, 
Ceilier, III, and Lumper XI ; separate lives by Rett- 
berg, Gottingen, 1831 ; Poole, Oxford, 1840 (super- 
seded by Benson) ; Reitmeier, Augsb., 1848; Blam- 
bignon, Paris, 1861 ; Peters (Prof, in R. C. Episco- 
pal seminary at Luxemburg), Regensburg, 1877 
(able, but written from strictly Roman point of 
view) ; Fechtrup, Munster, 1878 (the best German 
life written as a separate work, but lacking in some 
points; see Harnack in TheoL Literaturzeitung, 
1879, nr. 6, 125-7) 5 Benson, London and New 
York, 1897. Archbishop Benson devoted thirty or 



Appendix III. 221 

forty years to the study of the life and times of 
Cyprian, and his book is one of the greatest mono- 
graphs in Church history ever written. He has 
poured into notes the abundant fruits of amazing 
and minute learning. His book is written con 
amove, from the High Church point of view, with 
glowing admiration for his hero, but not without 
criticism here and there. It ranks with Lightfoot's 
Clement of Rome and Ignatius among the very 
greatest English patristic studies of the nineteenth 
century. The New York edition (from same 
plates) is out of print. Benson's "Catholic" stand- 
point occasioned the admirable brief Sir William 
Muir's "Cyprian, His Life and Teachings," Edinb : 
T. and T. Clark, 1898, 40 pp. On Benson see the 
London Quarterly Review, January 1898, 253-70, — 
an excellent article ; Church Quarterly Review, Lon- 
don, October, 1897, 25-53 1 G. Kruger in Theol. Lit.- 
Zeit., 1899, nr - z 4> 4 I 3" I 5^ F- Johnson in Amer. 
Journ. of Theol, April, -1898, 422-6; F. H. Chase in 
Critical Rev., July, 1897, 34 I ~5 2 ; H. Liidemann in 
Theol. Jahresbericht, 1897, Berlin, 1898, 195-6. Long 
and excellent treatments of Cyprian are also found in 
the "Church Histories" of Schrock, Vol 4; Neander, 
Boston ed., vol. I ; Bohringer, "Die Kirche Christi 
und ihre Zeugen, oder die Kirchengeschichte in 



222 Cyprian: Ths Churchman. 

Biographien," vol. 4, 2. Aufl. 1874, pp. 813-1039, 
which is often found printed separately ; and Farrar, 
"Lives of the Fathers/' Lond., 1889, vol. II, pp. 
185-260. 

There are many monographs and special articles, 
for which see the bibliography prefixed to Leim- 
bach's article in the Hauck-Herzog Realencyklop'd- 
die, 3. Aufl. 1898, 367 ff., Bardenhewer, Patrologie, 
2. Aufl. 1901, 167-175; and (for late lit.) the ad- 
mirable work of Prof. Ehrhard in the Strassburger 
Theol. Studien, viz., "Die Altchristliche Literatur 
und ihre Erforschung von I884-I900, ,, 1. Abt. 
Freib. in B. 1900, 455-81. It will be sufficient to 
mention here Otto Ritschl (Son of Albrecht), 
"Cyprian von Carthago und die Verfassung der 
Kirche," Gottingen, 1885, an able and independent 
study, especially valuable in the second part, but 
specially original in the first part, in which are new 
combinations and results, some of which, I think, 
are overdrawn, as e. g., his main achievement, that 
Cyprian's view of the Church is the result of the 
pressure of circumstances, the response (so to 
speak) to the historical situation in which he found 
himself, an evolution drawn out by the opposition 
of the presbyters, confessors, and the Novatian 
movement, something invented to meet contingen- 



Appendix III. 223 

cies. See the long and, on the whole, very favorable 
review by Zoepffel, the TheoL Lit.-Zeit, 1885, nr. 
13, 229-304, nr. 14, 326-30; also Th. Jahresb. 5 
(1885), 149. Carl Goetz, "Die Busslehre Cyprian/' 
Konigsb. in Pr., 1895, — an earnest scientific piece 
of work, corrected, however, in one main conclusion 
by K. Muller in "Zeitschrift f. Kirchengeschichte," 
16: 187 ff K. G. Goetz, "Das Christentum Cyprians/' 
Giessen, 1896, a careful and impartial work, but 
partially spoiled by a new and arbitrary terminology 
and method of division, on which see Liidemann in 
Th. Jahresb. 1896, 163-4. K. H. Wirth, "Der Ver- 
dienst-Begriff in der Christlichen Kirche, II Der 
Verdienst-Begriff bei Cyprian/' Leipzig, 1901, an 
excellent and exhaustive study. Hans Freiherr von 
Soden, "Die Cyprianische Brief sammlung," Leipz., 
1904. Von Soden shows the early wide diffusion 
and use of Cyprian's letters. He says that numerous 
copies were circulated even in his own lifetime ; that 
he himself prepared compendia of his letters (Ep. 
27 [22] : 4) ; and that before Cyprian died his let- 
ters had a place in the devotional literature of the 
Church. The writings of Cyprian which are known 
to us, but which have perished, were lost at a very 
early date. Von Soden thinks that the oldest col- 
lection of letters was intended for confessors and 



224 Cyprian: The: Churchman. 

martyrs, and the next collection for the strife with 
the heretics. "Bishop Lucifer, of Calaris, in his 
treatise, made use of nothing but the Holy Scrip- 
tures and the writings of Cyprian/' See Tasker in 
Expository Times, June, 1904, 410. 

Three English translations of Cyprian's com- 
plete works exist: (1) by Nathan Marshall, 4to, 
Lond, 1717; (2) by Chas. Thornton and H. Carey, 
in Oxford Library of Fathers, 2 vols., Oxf. 1839, 
1844; and (3) by Ernest Wallis in Ante-Nicene 
Fathers, Edinb., 1868-9, N. Y., 1886. 



INDEX 



Page 

Absolution 152-5 

Actor, Case of 50 

Alexandria, Treatment of 

lapsed at 89, 100-1 

Asceticism ... 76, 78, 144, 166-2 
Atonement 155 

Baptism — 
Regeneration in. .,21, 142, 149 

By Heretics 176-88 

Post-baptismal Sins 76-7 

Sick-bed Baptism, (note) 197 
Basilides of Leon, Case of. . 172 

Berber Raids 122 

Bible, Ancient attitude to . . 36 
Bibliography, Cyprianic 219-24 
Bishop — 
Office of ace. to Cyp- 
rian 41-3, in 

Privileges of 43, 165 

How elected. . . s 44 

Degeneration of 55-6 

His new part in Discip- 
line 80-3 

See also whole ch. 8. 
See Church. 

Callistus, his new decree 

as to penitents 81, 100 

Captives, redeeming 123 

Carthage 1-17 

Certificates — 

Sacrificial 69-71 

Martyrs' ...... 78-80, 856°., 99 

Christ, Doctrine of 37 

Church, Doctrine of. 118-20, 148 

153-4 
Clergy— 

Catholic theory of, 39 

Ace. to Cyprian 41-3 

As traders and laborers . 48-9 
Orders invalidated 
by grave sin 173 



Page 
Cyprian — 

His training 18 

Conversion 20-5 

Opinion on the gods 26 

On paganism 30-4 

His book against the Jews 36 

His view of Christ 37 

Made Bishop 38 

On Church and Ministry 39-44 

Pope 6 . 46 

Work for Discipline... 48-57 

Flees persecution 74 

Dealing with the lapsed 84 ft 

Returns 96 

Attitude to Novatian. . . 110-5 
Incites to charity in giv- 
ing to captives 124-6 

To care for sick 128 

On merit of good deeds ... 130 
Writes "To Demetrian." 133 

"On Mortality " 136 

" On the Lord's Prayer " 140 ff 

As a Catholic H7 ff 

Was he a Roman Cath- 
olic 163 fT 

His quarrel with Stephen, 

of Rome 176-8 

His first trial 190 

Banished 192 

Summoned back 198 

Last letter 198-200 

His second trial 201 

His execution 202-4 

Abiding significance . . .205-7 

Dead, Prayers and offerings 

for 50, 159, 164 

Demons, Casting out 26-8 

Episcopate, Carthaginian 
modeled on civil or- 
ganization 15 



15 



225 



226 



Index. 



Page 
Epistles, Cyprian's, chrono- 
logical order 216 

Eucharist, See Supper, 
ford's. 

Felicissimus, Schism 

of 92-6, 98 

Gods, Origin of heathen 26, 28-9 
Jews, Cyprian on 37 

Lawyers — 

Ancient 18 

Corrupt 33 

I^aity — 

Place of 38 

Active in electing Bish 

op 44-6, 173 

lapsed — 

The (apostates to heathen- 
ism) question of. . 75 ff,84 ff 
Final disposition of their 
case 96, 116 

Marcian of Arles, Case 

.of 174 

Merit- 
Beginning of 78 

Cyprian on 130, 155-8 

Treasury of 159 

Military element in Cartha- 
ginian language 13 

Mines, Labor in, as punish- 
ment 64, 193 

Monasticism. See Asceticism. 

Novatian and his move- 
ment 102 ff 

Novatus 1 12-5 

PAEDERASTY 32 

Paganism — 

Moral condition of 22-3 

Treatment of sicK . . . . 127-8 
Cruelty of 134 

Persecution of Christians — 

Reasons for 58-63 

Decian 63 ff 

Tortures 135 

Peter, Primacy of 148 

Plague of 252 ff. 126-30 



Page 
Pope — 
Title, when and for whom 

first used 46 

Of Rome, his head- 
ship 165-75 

See Stephen. 
Prayer — 

Posture in 145 

Rules for 146 

Lord's, Cyprian on 140 ff 

Purgatory. See Dead. 

Saints, Intercession of . . . . 160 

Shows, Gladiatorial 31 

Sins, Artificial Cath. dis- 
tinction in 76 ff 

Stephen, Bishop of Rome — 
His relation to two Span- 
ish bishops 172 

Prompted to duty by 

Cyprian 174 

Opposed by Cyprian on 
question of Doctrine 

and Discipline 176-88 

Suffering, Why permitted 133-8 
Supper, ford's, referred to 

in Lord's Prayer 144 

Cyprian's Views of.... 150-2, 
158-9. 

Tertullian— 

As writer 8, 11 

His significance 13-15 

His view of the minis- 
try 39-41 

On merit 78 

On mortal sins 81 

Against assumptions of 

Roman bishops 82 

Theater 8, 9, 31, 51 

Trades, Ministers in 48-9 

Unity, Interpolations in 

Cyprian's book on 169, 208 ff 

Valerian persecution 189 

Virgines subintroductse 52 

War reprobated by early 

Christians 30 



SEP. 25 1906 



